A drug trafficker who worked for Al Sharpton’s nonprofit in the 1980s
said that despite the preacher’s denials, he was eager to get a slice
of the lucrative drug deal captured on FBI surveillance video.
Sharpton has said he showed interest in the drug deal only because he feared the undercover agent was armed. He also claimed that he snitched for the feds — as first reported by The Smoking Gun this week — because the mob was threatening him.
Curington called all of that a tall tale.
He instead provided a detailed account of how Sharpton wined and dined a man he thought was a South American drug lord — and said Sharpton met him not just once, but three times.
Sharpton’s saga began in the Manhattan offices of boisterous boxing big shot Don King in 1983, Curington said.
An unnamed felon trying to duck a 30-year prison sentence promised the feds he could help them nail King on coke-dealing charges.
An undercover FBI agent, using the name Victor Quintana, set up a meeting with King to discuss a boxing match in the Bahamas — but King had a bad feeling about the potential business partner and pawned him off on Sharpton.
“King was sly — he knew something was off about this,” Curington said. “So he kept him downstairs and let his new best friend Al Sharpton talk to him.”
Sharpton was eager to help, and “would spend cash taking him to dinner and chauffeur him around in a limo, feeling him out,” Curington said.
Then, at a restaurant, “they are talking and cutting their steaks. The agent’s voice changes, midstream, and he says, ‘I know where 10 kilos of cocaine are and we can make some big money on this.’
“Sharpton didn’t roll alone — he had a friend or adviser with him who says, ‘Hold it! This meeting is over. You come in here talking about boxing and now you’re gonna talk about cocaine? Let’s go, Al. We’re not into that.’
“Sharpton was hesitant to leave,” Curington remembered. “I believe he wanted to hear him out, but he listened to his friend.”
Sharpton met with Quintana a second time, in a hotel. Again, cocaine came up, and Sharpton’s pals called off the meeting.
At the third meeting with Quintana, Sharpton made sure to go alone — wearing a cowboy hat and chomping on an unlit cigar, which was made famous in footage from the FBI surveillance leaked in 2002.
“The agent said you would get $3,500 per kilo,” said Curington, who was not at the meetings but was told about them by Sharpton.
“Sharpton moved on it, and they sprung the trap on him right away. They got him.
“Al told me himself. He bit and took the bait.”
Read More: New York Post
