L.A. County sheriff’s deputy charged in alleged ticket-fixing scheme

Prosecutors filed felony charges Thursday against a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, accusing him of accepting $1,500 in bribes for agreeing to fix traffic tickets, a district attorney’s spokesman said.

Edwin Tamayo, 44, faces six counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice, two counts of accepting bribes and a single count of preparing false documents, said district attorney’s office spokesman Greg Risling.

Tamayo is accused of accepting $1,000 from a friend or acquaintance in 2012 in return for fixing two speeding tickets and another citation issued for failing to stop at a stop sign, Risling said.

The deputy, who worked at the Lost Hills station, allegedly accepted an additional $500 bribe from a businessman in 2011.

Risling said Tamayo fixed the traffic tickets by either intercepting them before they were sent to court for processing or removing court notices sent to a colleague who had issued the citations.

The deputy is scheduled to be arraigned June 25. The charges carry a maximum sentence of nine years and eight months in prison, Risling said.

Tamayo, a 13-year department veteran, has been on paid leave since February 2013 pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation.

His attorney, Jacob Glucksman, said Wednesday that the deputy maintains his innocence and that sheriff’s investigators may not know all the facts surrounding the allegations.

Tamayo and his attorneys told The Times last year that he wore a wire for the FBI and secretly recorded a department supervisor as part of an investigation into allegations of improper campaign fundraising.

Tamayo said FBI agents asked him to wear the wire after he told them that a captain gathered him and other subordinates at a patrol station barbecue pit and ordered them to sell tickets to a 2011 fundraiser for Carmen Trutanich’s unsuccessful bid for district attorney.