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An investigation by FBI and DEA agents out of Passaic County led to the arrest of 45-year-old Ralph “the Milk Man” Mata of Broward County, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman said this afternoon.
A federal complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Newark charges Mata with one count each of: aiding and abetting a conspiracy to distribute cocaine; conspiring to distribute cocaine; and engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity – specifically, drug proceeds.
Fishman said Mata, who’d been working as a lieutenant with the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Internal Affairs unit, was scheduled to go before a federal judge in Florida tomorrow.
The complaint unsealed today said that Mata and members of the drug trafficking organization discussed the murder plot after rival dealers threatened to kill them.
“Mata stated that his contacts – assassins – would wear uniforms and badges to make it appear as though the two targets of the plot were being pulled over by law enforcement before shooting them,” it says.
Mata arranged to pay two assassins $150,000 per target, the complaint alleges. And although the leaders of the drug ring decided against the plan, he “still received a payment for setting up the meetings,” it says.
Federal prosecutors say Mata also bought guns “to provide protection and security to the [organization]members …which he transported on two separate trips from Miami to the Dominican Republic between Oct.5, 2012, and Jan. 17, 2013.”
Federal agents recovered several of the weapons, the complaint says.
It says he also helped ferry large sums of drug money for the organization “in exchange for cash and a Rolex watch valued at approximately $10,000.”
Locally, the complaint says Mata also “used sources of information available to him as a law enforcement officer to find out information about the seizure of $419,000 in narcotics proceeds from a Bergen County, which members of the [organization] suspected had been stolen by another member, but were in fact seized by law enforcement.”
Fishman credited special agents of the FBI’s Garret Mountain Resident Office; the DEA’s Paterson Post of Duty; IRS – Criminal Investigation ouf of Newark; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations out of New York.
He also thanked the Miami FBI, Miami-Dade Police Department and Miami-Area Corruption Task Force for their assistance.
Representing the government is Assistant U.S. Attorneys Mary Toscano of Fishman’s Special Prosecutions Division, José Almonte of the Criminal Division, and Barbara Ward and Marion Percell, chief of the office’s Asset Forfeiture Unit.
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