John DeLorean - Arrest and Trial

Arrest and Trial

In the summer of 1982, DeLorean received a phone call from James Hoffman, a former drug smuggler turned FBI informant. DeLorean met with Hoffman on July 11, 1982, to discuss an investment opportunity to help save his company. Over the course of the next three months, Hoffman slowly explained his intricate plan involving cocaine smugglers, a bank for laundering money, and the specifics of how much money DeLorean would be required to front to procure the deal. DeLorean went along with these discussions only agreeing that what was being suggested would work, he had been talking to his attorney who advised him to just stall and not give the money, which was supposed to be paid to James Hoffman as a commission for brokering a deal between DeLorean Motor Company and potential "investors". DeLorean avoided paying the money by lying and stating that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had control of the money and had placed the money to pay fees to the British government. He was told by Benedict, an "investor" that DeLorean had put him in a bad spot and that it would be a "bloody mess", this was construed as a threat that later DeLorean was told meant it would be his daughter if he did not cooperate. DeLorean was told to make it look like the money was there so the deal could go through. On October 19, before going to meet the investors to consummate the deal, DeLorean wrote a letter to his attorney and sealed it, with instructions to open it only if he did not return. The letter explained the situation he was in and his fear for his family's safety if he tried to back out of the deal. On October 19, 1982, DeLorean was charged with trafficking in cocaine by the U.S. government.

DeLorean successfully defended himself with a procedural defense, despite video evidence of his referring to a suitcase full of cocaine as "good as gold" – arguing that the FBI had enticed a convicted narcotics smuggler to get him to supply the money to buy the cocaine. His attorney stated in Time (March 19, 1984), "This a fictitious crime. Without the government, there would be no crime." The DeLorean defense team did not call any witnesses. DeLorean was found not guilty because of entrapment on August 16, 1984.

In late 1982, DeLorean's legal troubles were satirized in the comic strip Doonesbury, in which the character of Uncle Duke travels to Hollywood to become a film producer and make a movie based on DeLorean's life story. Duke, in an attempt to raise the money needed to buy the rights to the story, sets up a cocaine deal and is arrested by undercover government agents.