By MAXINE BERNSTEIN

The Oregonian | OregonLive

Shortly after 9 a.m. on a Saturday in December, two men showed up at the office of a Public Storage warehouse in Southeast Portland and asked about renting space.

On-site manager Shawn Riley led them to an empty unit and unlocked it.

The pair followed him in, then suddenly drew large silver handguns. One of the men pressed his pistol against the manager’s forehead.

The two demanded to know who’d stolen their “stuff’’ -- a stash of nearly 500 pounds of marijuana in another unit at the business.

Riley hadn’t taken anything, he told them in a shaky voice.

But who had?

Agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration, it turns out. And the agents deliberately made the confiscation look like a burglary, according to court records.

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Maxine Bernstein | The Oregonian/OregonLive

The harrowing confrontation terrorized Riley and turned a spotlight on a controversial ploy used by agents in drug cases to smoke out suspected traffickers. Oregon surprisingly is No. 2 in the nation in requesting what are known as delayed-notice search warrants.

The “sneak-and-peek” warrants, as they’re more commonly called, allow investigators to search a house, car, computer, other property or item, seize evidence and not tell anyone until much later. That differs from the typical search warrant, which requires police to provide immediate notice to property owners.

The delayed warrants mean agents can avoid tipping off suspects and jeopardizing an investigation, while potentially provoking them into revealing drug suppliers or other connections when it appears someone has stolen their cache.

The technique appears to have backfired this time, imperiling an innocent bystander held at gunpoint and blowing the agents’ drug investigation.

“The danger of violence is obviously real, and this case makes it very evident. Someone could have been killed,’’ said Jonathan Witmer-Rich, a criminal law professor at Cleveland State University who studies use of the warrants nationwide. “I think it illustrates this is a dangerous tactic, and the law is not requiring police to reduce such risks.’’

The federal statute that allows the warrants should incorporate extra safeguards to protect against this kind of outcome, Witmer-Rich said.

Russ Baer, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, declined comment on the warrant or the agency’s tactics, citing the ongoing criminal investigation.

The government seeks the warrants “to preserve the secrecy of an investigation,’’ said Kevin Sonoff, spokesman for Oregon’s U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams. The office declined to discuss the ramifications of the warrant issued in this case.

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The Associated Press | File

‘I THINK THE POLICE DID’

The two men appeared furious and desperate. They were told someone had broken into their storage locker and cleared it out. They wanted to know who.

After they lured Riley into a different unit, one of the gunmen grabbed him by the shoulder, pushed him against the wall and yelled, “Get down! Get the (expletive) down!” The man filmed the confrontation with his cellphone, the light from the camera shining into Riley’s face.

He ordered his cohort to bind Riley’s wrists and ankles with duct tape, according to the video, which was played in court. The intruders went through the manager’s pockets and took his keys as they repeatedly demanded to know who knocked off their unit.

At first, Riley wasn’t sure what the men were talking about, then he recalled the break-in days earlier.

“When I came in, the door was half open,” he told the men. “The door was ripped off the track. “They didn’t get the lock off, so they broke the door. … I reported the break-in.’’

Riley told his attackers that he fixed the door a couple of days later. It was around then that he learned who had broken the door, he said.

“I think the police did. That is what my boss said,’’ Riley told the men, according to the video. “Then my boss said it wasn’t a break in.’’

“You’re telling me the police took my (expletive)?’’ one of the men asked in disbelief.

If Riley was lying, they implied that they’d shoot him. “Pop goes the weasel,” said the man with the gun to the manager’s head.

Then the two then abruptly left, closing the storage unit door with Riley still trussed up but alive.

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Eric Kayne | Getty Images | File

ALLEGED OREGON-TO-TEXAS TRAFFICKING

Before, during and after the Dec. 2 attack, Drug Enforcement Administration agents had been tracking the movement of one of the alleged gunmen and a woman through GPS traces of their phones and cars.

The monthslong surveillance was part of a broader investigation into black market trafficking of marijuana from Oregon to Texas, according to a prosecutor’s memo opposing the defendants’ release from jail before the trial. The DEA was working with a team of officers from Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI, Port of Portland police and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office.

Last August, investigators at Portland International Airport had found $184,740 in cash concealed in a shoebox in a passenger’s checked luggage, said Assistant U.S. Attorney William Narus.

Agents discovered that the money was tied to a man and a woman suspected of buying large supplies of marijuana in Oregon and smuggling the bundles back to Texas for distribution, Narus said.

Investigators identified the man, Jody T. Wafer, of Houston, as the one who coordinated buying the drugs in Oregon for transport back to Texas, records indicate.

DEA agents tracked Wafer and the woman, Brittany Kizzee, using undercover surveillance that included covert photography, wiretapping and even trick phone calls, according to court records.

They learned of the large stockpile of marijuana at the Public Storage outlet on Southeast 82nd Avenue and decided to seize it before they suspected it might be shipped to Texas, court records show. The investigators also were still working to identify the drug suppliers in Oregon.

On Nov. 17, DEA agents got a judge’s signature on a delayed-notice search warrant, giving them authority to enter the Public Storage unit, seize property and not tell anyone for weeks.

Four days later on Nov. 21, the narcotics agents broke into the unit, knocked the door off its track, seized 484 pounds of marijuana and left the door ajar as if a real burglary had occurred.

Sometime in late November, the agents directed a district manager from Public Storage to make a “ruse call’’ to Kizzee, feeding the manager lines about what to say about a break-in at the unit.

Then on Nov. 30, the agents learned Wafer, Kizzee and a second man, Trent Knight, were flying from Texas to Portland, set to touch down about 8:45 p.m. The agents followed them when they arrived. They saw at the airport that Knight appeared to have a gun, according to court records.

On Dec. 1, the agents saw their targets driving in circles around Public Storage.

And that Saturday morning, Dec. 2, the agents tracked them in a pickup that drove up to the Public Storage unit. Two men got out. A woman stayed behind the wheel. About 10 minutes later, the truck drove away, according to court documents.

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Maxine Bernstein | The Oregonian/OregonLive

‘WEED IS LEGAL HERE’

After his assailants had left, Riley managed to break free and call 911 around 9:30 a.m.

Portland police responded quickly, he told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Officer Patrick Nagy took Riley’s statement and viewed surveillance footage from the storage business.

Nagy checked with Portland’s Drugs and Vice Division to see if it was involved in the marijuana confiscation at the Public Storage unit, but Portland police said they weren’t aware of it. They later learned DEA agents working with airport police were in on the marijuana investigation, though it was just the DEA that raided the storage unit.

“We just had to deal with the aftermath,’’ said Portland police Capt. Mark Kruger, head of the drug division.

Nagy and other officers arrested Wafer, Knight and Kizzee about two hours later, after the three had passed through security at Portland International Airport before boarding a plane to Houston.

As officers approached Wafer, he slammed his cellphone to the floor in an apparent attempt to break it, according to Narus, the prosecutor.

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Mandel Ngan | Getty Images

Investigators recovered the phone, which held footage of the violent encounter at Public Storage earlier that morning and another video of what looked like the two men play-acting their planned holdup with guns in their hotel room the night before, Narus said. Police also recovered two loaded firearms in Knight’s checked baggage, he said.

It’s unclear why the gunmen filmed the crime, but it’s possible that they needed to show some proof to others in the alleged drug-trafficking scheme that they didn’t steal the marijuana themselves.

By leading the suspects to think their drugs had been stolen, the federal agents likely wanted to intercept ensuing conversations, hoping they would generate further leads to identify the marijuana suppliers, said Witner-Rich, the law professor. It’s not clear if that happened in this case.

But DEA agents have done that in other cases, including one this month in Ohio that led to the largest methamphetamine bust in that state's history. Authorities seized 82 pounds of crystal meth from a warehouse on a delayed-notice search warrant, leading three suspects to believe they'd been robbed. That's when one got the "green light'' from his Mexican supplier to kill the person he believed had stolen the drugs, according to intercepted phone calls quoted in court documents.

In Oregon, Wafer, 28, Knight, 29, and Kizzee, 27, now face federal charges of kidnapping and conspiracy to brandish a firearm in a crime of violence.

No marijuana trafficking charges have been filed in the case. The kidnapping and conspiracy charges are much more serious, according to prosecutors and defense lawyers.

After his arrest, Wafer told a court official that he had been visiting Oregon every other month, according to court records.

He added, “Weed is legal here.’’

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The Associated Press | File

‘THE EXPERIENCE … WAS ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING’

During a court hearing earlier this month, the government argued that the treatment of the Public Storage manager reflected the defendants' "violent nature'' and they shouldn't be released before trial.

The prosecutor didn’t mention the secret raid of the storage unit by federal agents. Narus said the defendants “wrongly assumed’’ who had stolen their drug stash and committed a “violent offense against an innocent member of the public.’’

Attorney Barry Engle, who represents Wafer, blamed the federal investigators.

“The government’s own actors,” he said, prompted the alleged crime and “desperation’’ felt by his client. He noted in court documents and at the hearing that his client wasn’t admitting to any connection to the marijuana.

“The police knew that they were giving that impression that this was taken by the people working at the storage facility. I don’t know why, but that’s what they did,’’ Engle said.

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Multnomah County Sheriff's Office

From left: Wafer, Knight, Kizzee.





As for Riley, the 59-year-old manager said he took a week off work after the frightening ordeal.

A single man who grew up in Southeast Portland, he still works for Public Storage full time, now going on three years.

Asked if he believed that agents who broke into the storage unit had exposed him to potential violence, Riley didn’t speak but vigorously nodded his head. He then politely referred questions to his corporate office.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta, who had reviewed investigators' affidavits in the case, initially granted Wafer's release from jail pending trial, but the prosecutor challenged the ruling to another judge. Kizzee has been released pending trial, but Knight was ordered detained. All have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones watched the video of the attack on Riley. He ordered Wafer to remain in jail as well. The three are set for trial May 15.

“The experience here was absolutely terrifying, one of the most dangerous acts, threats of death, a threat of execution,’’ Jones said. “No way will this person be released.’’

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Maxine Bernstein | Staff

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian