On January 30, 2015, the Chicago Tribune quoted John Meyer in a lengthy article discussing the government’s practice over the past decade of using informants to entice persons to rob fictional drug “stash” houses that actually do not exist and the government’s recent decision to drop drug conspiracy charges in a number of such cases in the face of severe criticism by defense lawyers and judges:
“The ATF approaches what I would consider a vulnerable person … entices them with the prospect of hitting the jackpot with kilogram quantities of cocaine and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and most of them don’t have the smarts or will to resist such a temptation.,” said attorney John A. Meyer, who is representing a defendant in one of the seven cases. “And then it just escalates from there with the government providing them the details of how the robbery is going to be planned. And usually they need more than one person, so they recruit their friends. Before you know it, you have two, three, four, five individuals involved in a purported plan to rob a stash house.”