The U.S. government’s reward program sounds like money falling from the heavens. Give a good tip, get a few million dollars.
A $15 million bounty in the case of the kingpin they call El Mencho — one of dozens of criminal fugitives who have had multi-million-dollar price tags on their heads.
The question is: will the Mencho reward be paid? Or will it end up the same as a majority of government rewards — forever unpaid?
The most recent big-money U.S. government reward case comes on a dusty, rural road two hours south of Guadalajara, Mexico.
Heavily armed and armored, Mexican security teams were put on the right road to Nemesio Ruben “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes’ hideaway after information that law enforcement sources say was provided to the American CIA by a friend of Mencho’s mistress.
When they arrived at a well-adorned home in a luxury golf resort, El Mencho and his dozen bodyguards started a firefight, according to authorities, and tried to escape through the woods. Mencho, who was Chicago’s public enemy number one, was wounded and captured. He died while being flown to a hospital.
“Often in cases involving large rewards, the rewards are not paid out because the reward is paid if there’s apprehension and conviction of the person,” said former FBI agent Ken Gray, now a criminal justice lecturer at University of New Haven.
Now that El Mencho is dead, he can’t be convicted.
So even though someone did apparently provide information that pointed authorities to the fugitive drug lord, Gray says the reward wouldn’t have to be paid because the criminal died.
The U.S. State Department coordinates rewards currently posted for more than 100 drug cartel fugitives and transnational organized crime figures. Right now, the total of bounties on their heads is almost $480 million.
According to the most recent government data, $125 million has been paid out since the reward program started in 1984. Most fugitive rewards are not paid.
“For these large rewards, for instance, Osama bin Laden, $25 million reward, not paid out. A lot of these others for large rewards for the location, apprehension, and conviction often are not paid out,” Gray said. “The real advantage from offering a reward like this is that it brings it to the public’s attention.”
Gray worked on the famous Chicago Unabomber case: a 20-year odyssey of explosions that killed three and wounded two dozen until the bomber’s brother David provided information for his capture.
“So, the brother came forward with the information, not because of the reward, but in exchange for a promise not to have his brother, Ted Kaczynski subjected to the death penalty,” former federal agent Gray said. “There was a reward money that was offered to him. I believe that he gave it to charity, he did not accept it himself.”
David Kaczynski received what was one of the highest rewards at the time — one million dollars — and divvied it up among families victimized by his brother.
Many of the rewards today are $5 million or more. The most that can be offered for a single fugitive under the State Department program is $25 million.
Sometimes there are also private rewards, through Crimestoppers, corporations or families — as we’ve seen in the case of Savannah Guthrie’s mother Nancy Guthrie, who was abducted from her Arizona home on Feb 1. The Guthrie family is now offering one million dollars for her return.
