Many of the lapses in the league’s complicated system were on display in the spring of 2009 in New Orleans. During a four-month stretch, the Saints’ team trainers noticed Vicodin pills had gone missing. On April 28, 2009, according to a civil complaint later filed in state district court, the team’s director of security, a former FBI agent named Geoffrey Santini, was notified. At the instruction of Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis, Santini installed a pair of hidden cameras in the Saints’ training room.
The footage in the first video is in full color, grainy but unmistakable. Saints assistant head coach Joe Vitt, wearing khaki shorts and a black long-sleeved team shirt, can be seen unlocking a metal cabinet in the trainer’s office. Unaware that he’s being recorded, Vitt removes a bottle and pours pills into his hand before locking the cabinet and exiting the room.
There are two more video clips from the ensuing days that clearly show Vitt alone in the office, unlocking a cabinet and helping himself to a handful of prescription painkillers. The locks were quickly changed and one final video captured Vitt’s failed attempt to get inside the cabinet.
Not long after, Santini called Loomis to discuss the situation and recorded the conversation. During the exchange, the two discussed to what authority they must answer.
“Mickey, I am just telling you that is not how it works,” Santini says. “The law is there.”
“We are not talking about the law,” Loomis responds. “We are talking about the league.”
The videos and recorded conversations, much of them reviewed by The Post, have become evidence in a DEA investigation that is now in the hands of the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Orleans. The case is still open and, according to people with knowledge of the situation, federal authorities are weighing a hefty fine against the Saints for violating laws governing the proper storage, control and dispensing of prescription drugs.