FBI airs claims against former deputy in hearing

(AP) — A federal magistrate judge has refused to grant bail for a former St. Bernard Parish sheriff’s deputy indicted in rape-related drug charges along with his co-defendant, former New Orleans Saints football player Darren Sharper.
A bond hearing Thursday included accusations by FBI agents that Brandon Licciardi beat his girlfriend, worked for a bookie and trafficked in club drugs.
There were also claims that Licciardi attended a convention in Las Vegas with NFL players and was warned that drinks there were spiked with drugs.
Miller and fellow prosecutor Mike McMahon also pointed to Licciardi’s other federal charges: two counts of witness tampering and one count of impeding an investigation. The prosecutors said those charges, especially in light of Licciardi being a former police officer, made him a threat to intimidate witnesses in the case.
None of those other accusations have yet led to criminal charges, although an FBI agent said he’d like investigate the NFL allegations.
“I know that the state and them have put tremendous pressure in throwing everything but the kitchen sink at my client to keep him in jail. That was clearly the goal, and they accomplished that,” Licciardi’s attorney Ralph Capitelli said after the hearing.
Besides the federal charges, Licciardi was indicted on state charges of aggravated rape, three counts of human trafficking for the purposes of providing sexual conduct and one count of battery. Licciardi, 29, was fired from his job as a sergeant with the sheriff’s office when the indictment was unsealed.
In the same state indictment, Sharper, 39, is charged with two counts of aggravated rape from a Sept. 23, 2013 incident in which two women complained of being drugged and raped at a party at a condo Sharper was using. Sharper is also charged separately with a simple rape from August 2013.
Sharper acquaintance Erik Nunez, 27, is charged with the same two counts of aggravated rape for allegedly participating in the Sept. 23 attack. Nunez also is charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly erasing incriminating text messages.
The agents testified that in Licciardi’s role as debt collector for the local bookie, Sharper placed sports bets as high as $5,000. When Sharper, at that point retired from the NFL, wanted to bet higher amounts, the bookie hooked him up with a Russian gambling operation in California.
“Sharper lost a lot of money and said he was not going to pay the Russians,” FBI agent DeWayne Horner testified. Brandon was warned (by the local bookie) that ‘They will come kill you.’”
More troubling testimony came from the lead case agent Robert Blythe, who testified about getting information regarding a party in Las Vegas attended by Licciardi in which unnamed NFL players prepared a concoction called “horny juice” — champagne mixed with narcotics — to give to women in order to take advantage of them.