In August 2011, three Cleveland detectives -- two of which were assigned to the task force -- met with an informant, an "associate" of a man named Alexander Febres.
"Alex" and "Gil [Mendez]," he told the detectives, had an entire cocaine operation running through Sin nightclub. They'd "receive kilogram quantities" of cocaine there, repackaged it, and sold it out of the VIP room. Febres and Mendez would regularly drive to Chicago in different cars to pick up cocaine, the CI said; the duo also had a supplier in Florida.
The informant "stated that Gilbert Mendez owns Club Sin with a Cleveland Police Officer named Juan Torres aka, 'Tito,'" wrote Cleveland police detective James Cudo, a lead investigator in the task force, in an affidavit nearly two and a half years later about the meeting.
It is not clear why Cudo wrote "Juan" instead of "Jose" in the affidavit -- Jose Torres and Cudo are colleagues, it was no secret that Jose Torres was involved in the club, and records and police rosters were available to him to check Jose Torres' affiliation. In that affidavit, written in Dec. 2013, Cudo made a footnote regarding the informant's statement: "It is unclear at this point of the investigation whether Torres is involved with this establishment." Records available to Scene do not indicate whether the task force cleared up that question.
But sources tell Scene that Mendez and Torres were business partners around the start of the investigation in 2011, which was put on hold later that fall for nearly two years. They'd part ways in the coming years, we were told, by the time the task force seriously dove into the investigation again in the second half of 2013.
Shortly after that August 2011 meeting with the informant -- an associate of Alex Febres -- the task force brought in two paid informants with no previous connection to Mendez and Febres.
The pair met with Mendez inside Sin's VIP room and set up a deal. They met back at the club a few weeks later, where Mendez and Febres told them an ounce of cocaine would cost $1,400. A week later, in October, Febres met the two informants at a house around West 30th Street and Monroe -- a block from St. Ignatius in Ohio City -- where he sold them 21.4 grams of cocaine, all recorded on audio and video for the task force.
According to task force records obtained by Scene, that's it for the investigation until midway through 2013.
In the meantime, Mendez violated his post-release probation, according to a January 2013 probation violation hearing in federal court: "The defendant admitted to violating the terms of supervised release for a new law violation and possession of a controlled substance."
Records detailing how that violation came about were not available, but later records detail "Numerous State ID Cards," "Numerous Credit Cards," "Marijuana and Glass Pipe," and a passport that were seized. Mendez was cited by Cleveland Police June 25, 2012, for a car noise violation, but there's no indication the stop included anything more than that.
The federal probation department recommended "the defendant participate in cognitive behavioral therapy." Mendez would not be going back to prison -- perhaps a sign that something deeper was in the works: A sweeping investigation is impossible with your main target locked up and unable to lead you to others.
Which is likely why when Mendez ran into police again on March 1, 2013, and was arrested for disorderly conduct intoxication, a prosecutor promptly dismissed the charge.
By 2013, the task force was back on Mendez's trail, with a new weapon in their investigation: an informant known in court records as "CS5" (Confidential Source 5).
At the task force's direction and surveillance and using their money, CS5 made tens of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine purchases from Mendez between April and December 2013. The task force recorded his phone calls with Mendez, decoding his verbiage when discussing drug deals to provide clues for later conversations when they'd tap his phone. When Mendez needed more cocaine for a deal with CS5, they'd track Mendez to his suppliers and associates.
And this was important, because between when the investigation started in 2011 and when it was picked back up in 2013, the investigation into Mendez and Febres had expanded beyond West Sixth Street to houses, business, and side streets throughout neighborhoods on the West Side of Cleveland. An auto shop owned by one of Mendez's friends had become a hub for the operation. Mendez was tooling around in a number of different cars -- a SAAB, a Mercedes, a Honda Accord, a Trail Blazer.
Other than a single controlled buy by CS5 in April 2013, the action didn't get going until that August, when investigators started documenting Mendez's paranoia -- which turned out to be based in reality -- about getting caught. He was clearly aware of the possibility he was being watched. He took down license plate numbers of cars that he thought looked suspicious. He insisted CS5 get in his car -- a controlled environment, he thought -- when they'd meet for a deal. When he drove to meeting with his associates to check if any car was following, he'd drive randomly on side streets that were out of his way, constantly making quick turns; on the highway, he'd get on and get off again.
On September 12, for the first time, a federal judge authorized using a "pen register" and "trap and trace" on Mendez's phone.
Soon came a full wiretap of his phone, allowing investigators to listen in on his calls in real time. And then the GPS tracking devices that were installed on his ever-changing fleet of cars. Which is how they learned that "Do you wanna eat at Willie's Restaurant?" was really code for meeting at his buddy Israel "Izzy" Cortes' auto shop on West 63rd Street and Storer to discuss and conduct deals. And it led to Joseph Velez, a previously convicted dealer, and Erick Mendez, whose house Gilbert Mendez used for business. And it led to a search warrant for Febres' apartment, where they found 470 grams of coke and a variety of drug-related tools.
But the biggest piece of the investigation had not yet come.
