'The Dakota Entrapment Tapes': Who was Andrew Sadek? College student forced to be a police informant found dead
When we think of the world of confidential informants, we often have the wrong idea about it -- either we think it's slightly glamorous (like being a spy), or we think that those involved deserve to be in that level of danger because they committed a crime. However, for the War on Drugs, American police recruited many young confidential informants, even if they were caught with a minor amount of drugs.
One such young person was Andrew Sadek, a 20-year-old man going to college in Wahpeton, North Dakota. After graduating from Valley City High School in Valley City, North Dakota, he began attending North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton in 2012 and was studying to become an electrical technician. In 2013, Sadek started selling small amounts of cannabis on campus, meeting customers in the school's parking lot. That's where things started to go wrong.
On two occasions he sold drugs on campus, the buyer was another student working as a confidential informant working for the Southeast Multi-County Agency (SEMCA), a task force of police officers from various local law enforcement agencies across North Dakota and Minnesota, working on drug enforcement. Based on the sales he made, the SEMCA then performed a consent search of Sadek's room in November 2013 and found an orange plastic grinder with marijuana residue.
Sadek was not arrested or charged at the time but the following day, he met with a SEMCA officer, Jason Weber. Weber told him that because he was found selling on campus, under North Dakota law, he could be charged with a Class A felony, the most severe, and sentenced to over 40 years in prison if convicted and sentenced consecutively. Sadek did not want to take any chances and because he did not want to risk his future, he gave into police pressure to become a confidential informant.
And so, Sadek began the dangerous work as a confidential informant. He had to wear a wire and go after not just low-level dealers, but also higher-level dealers in neighboring cities. He continued making controlled buys of drugs from different dealers under the police's orders.
By April 2014, however, something had gone wrong. After he went to visit his parents and returned to campus, Sadek's mother called him to discuss their shared phone data plan. A few days later, the morning after Sadek had hung out with his roommate and friends, his roommate saw that he had gone. When Sadek did not attend any classes that day and had not returned by the next afternoon, he was reported missing.
Security cameras showed Sadek leaving the building late that night, carrying a backpack. He was carrying his phone but it was not turned on. The SEMCA assumed that Sadek had skipped town to avoid working as an informant, and formally charged him with two felonies to motivate him to return. Arrest warrants were issued thereafter and his parents pleaded publicly for him to come back home.
Nearly two months later, a police dive team doing a training exercise found Sadek's body in the Red River near Breckenridge, Minnesota, just across from Wahpeton. The body was beyond recognition and was identified through dental records.
Going into the investigation, Sadek’s parents had no idea that their son was involved in drug activity or that he was working as an informant. Since the college also didn’t know about Sadek’s drug activities, a school policy to notify parents when students violate drug or alcohol rules was never enforced.
The cause of Sadek's death was a small-caliber gunshot wound to the head. Whether the wound was self-inflicted or not could not be determined; the weapon has not been found. His backpack was filled with rocks and he was wearing a jacket he wasn't seen wearing in the security footage of him leaving campus. His wallet was also missing. Police dated Sadek's death within two days of his disappearance. Investigators believed the death to be a suicide. However, his parents never believed that was true -- he was just two weeks away from graduating, he had a new girlfriend, and he had made plans for the weekend after his disappearance.
A new miniseries on Sundance Now uncovers the forces at play in his death and reveals why law enforcement secretly waged a war on drugs, on a college campus that didn't have a drug problem. 'The Dakota Entrapment Tapes' will premiere on Sundance Now on Tuesday, October 27th at 3 am EST.
