On September 25, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Northern District of Illinois affirmed the conviction in United States v. Gary L. Howard of Howard to a 13-year prison sentence. Howard was appealing that the drug deal he was caught making was part of the work he previously did as a confidential informant for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Howard has been convicted on three federal drug charges for selling cocaine in a 2018 sting when he attempted purchasing 10 kilograms of cocaine for $280,000 in the parking lot of informant seller “Z’s” furniture store. A search of his home uncovered a loaded firearm and a drug ledger.
Howard’s HSI handler Anthony Sabaini had been receiving tips from Howard on rival dealers. In exchange for information, Sabaini had been asking other agencies to “stand down” on investigating Howard’s drug dealing. For this, Sabaini was convicted of federal corruption charges. Part of Howard’s appeal was objecting to the court refusing his request to subpoena Agent Sabaini, who could have provided a “public authority” defense for his drug dealing. Sabaini had refused to testify voluntarily because he was anticipating his own appeal, and feared discussing recorded jail calls that explained his quid pro quo deal with Howard.
Howard was also unsuccessfully objecting to the warrantless search of his phone, but Judge Steven C. Seeger disagreed because this search fell under the inevitable discovery doctrine: investigators had probable cause from text messages.
Howard should not have needed to continue dealing because he was being paid by HSI for informing. The standard method of payment is up to 25% of the net recovery from an asset forfeiture or net recoveries from a trafficking bust. They can also make up to $100,000 per year in cash payouts, with most paying only a few thousand dollars for a few buys. One of Howard’s problems was that he needed to pay his corrupt handler Agent Sabaini at least $50,000 for protection and law enforcement information. This specific amount was communicated in the coded text: “50 words on a page”, where “50” stood for $50,000. Sabaini used this cash to purchase a new car. In another case, Sabaini requested $50,000 from HSI for a cash drug buy only to pocket this cash while giving his informant counterfeit bills to use in the sale.
The corrupt dealings might have continued if wires were not crossed when Howard tried to sell two ounces for $2,400 from another confidential informant in 2017: this one from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). This suggests that American drug enforcement agencies are spending so much money and labor that they are catch each other in corrupt activities internal auditing methods are failing to catch. Sabaini managed to convince DEA agent Phillip Hahn not to prosecute his “golden goose” in 2017, he failed to intervene before Howard was arrested on a second DEA informant’s sale in 2018. With Howard in the system, it was too late for DEA Special Agent Anthony Anglada to take Sabaini up on his offer for Howard to “work it off if he cooperated”. A new problem then surfaced when Howard refused to “work it off” or to cooperate with Agent Anglada’s investigation. Thus, the DEA had to press charges for this sale against Howard. While Howard refused to cooperate in some ways, he had given a post-arrest statement that confessed to the drug deal because the investigator convinced him with a false promise of leniency. This meant Howard’s coerced statement could be suppressed at the trial, but not the gun, cash, and drug-dealing ledger that were found during a search at his house.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 80% of federal drug prosecutions involve confidential informants. And the total might be higher because 95% of drug cases are plea bargained, meaning the government never has to disclose how they obtained the evidence against the person on trial. And the United States Sentencing Commission has found that 50% of federal drug defendants cooperate or snitch on other drug dealers to ease their own sentences. And Forbes found that the DEA has an active list of 18,000 confidential informants. Their study calculated FBI, DEA and AFT jointly paid informants $548 million over a few years. While this seems like a lot, if the other two agencies have similar numbers of informants, each of them would have made on average $2,537 per year. Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Economic Research has concluded an average street dealer makes less than minimum wage at between $6-11 per hour.
To summarize what is happening: half of all people facing drug charges offer to serve as informants, but only a small percentage of these are asked to do so officially, and most might only assist with one or two drug buys. This is because after 2-4 controlled drug buys, they have worked off the quota required by their agreement that dropped their charges or reduced their sentence. And after helping to arrest their immediate network, an informant stops having value because they lack additional contacts that an officer would not be able to find themselves on cold buys.
The trick that Howard and Agent Sabaini pulled off before their arrest was to generate no drug busts or arrests across their affiliation. Howard did not make any controlled sales because the agent on his case wanted to make money from Howard in exchange for not busting him. The reason Howard transitioned from a $2,400 sale in 2017 to a $280,000 sale in 2018 was because he did not rat on his contacts, but rather helped to protect these connects with Sabaini’s help. Howard had become a rare example of a profitable dealer because of Sabaini’s protection.
A drug dealer in America has a 1-in-4 chance of being arrested in a given year, and near 100% certainty of being arrested over their career. This is assured by the 50% informant-turning odds, and is the reason for America having one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. In contrast, in Western Europe, Canada, Japan and most other developed nations, it is unheard of for agencies to give enormous cash payments to criminal informants. Abroad paying cash to informants is classified as bribery, as only basic reimbursement is allowed. And elsewhere prosecutors lack unreviewable discretion to wipe away felony charges because a defendant offers to snitch.
This case thus helps to explain that one way America could rapidly drop its incarceration rate, as well as its higher murder and lethal drug overdose rates is by adopting other countries policies of not paying cash to informants, and not dropping charges in exchange for snitching. Having one of the highest incarceration rates in the world has create a cycle of spiking addiction and criminality rates because those who enter the system cannot find work outside of it. Returning to Howard’s appeal: why did a dealer feel he was in the right despite being busted in this massive sale? From Howard’s perspective, he was paying kickbacks to a government agent who was (seemingly officially) directing him to make sales to have money to pay him kickbacks. If Sabaini was orchestrating these deals, he succeeded in deploying the American secrecy shield to not be forced to incriminate himself by explaining this under oath. Though mostly the appeal was the work of a lawyer who wanted to make a bit more money from a convicted drug dealer by nitpicking about a warrantless search and the definition of an “agreement”.
