Ex-FBI agent held in alleged robbery plot

The AP reports:

A federal magistrate has ordered a former Chicago FBI special agent held without bail after he was arrested for allegedly planning to rob a drug money stash house.

Vo Duong Tran was arrested by an FBI SWAT team late Monday in the Southern California city of Fountain Valley after he allegedly traveled from his home in New Orleans to carry out the robbery.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Marc L. Goldman said Thursday that Tran was a danger to the community, in part because of secretly taped conversations in which Tran referred to other murders-for-hire and armed robberies.

Tran worked as a special agent for the FBI in Chicago until he was fired in 2003.

Tran, who is Vietnamese-American, has a pending federal discrimination lawsuit against the agency.