Brother Gets 90-Day Term for Role in Telink Case

A federal judge in San Diego on Monday sentenced the brother of the county’s former communications chief to 90 days in prison for his involvement in an alleged scheme to influence the county’s 1982 award of a multimillion-dollar telephone contract.

David Stein, 65, of Roswell, N.M., was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Earl B. Gilliam, who suspended the balance of a five-year term pending Stein’s successful completion of three years’ probation.

Stein pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting wire fraud during events that led to the Board of Supervisors’ award of a $24-million phone contract to Telink Inc. of Anaheim. The contract was later canceled.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lantz Lewis said Stein received money from his brother, Abraham, and placed it in a New Mexico bank account that he had set up under a fictitious name. Lewis said the account was set up with money Telink officials paid Abraham Stein in exchange for his help in securing the contract for Telink.

“No doubt the reason David Stein stands before this court is because of his brother . . . but his small involvement was important in the overall scheme,” said Lewis, who asked for a sentence of three to six months.

Stein’s attorney, Robert Brewer, asked Gilliam to place the former World War II prisoner of war on probation for three years, as a San Diego County Probation Department report recommended, because of the defendat’s physical condition. Brewer told the judge that Stein still has shrapnel in his right hip from being shot down in a B-17 bomber over Germany in 1944. Stein spent 12 months in a German POW camp before it was liberated by Soviet soldiers, he said.

Stein told Gilliam he was sorry for what he had done, but added, “I was not aware of my brother’s criminal involvement. I trusted him, and now I feel used.”

Abraham Stein is one of 13 individuals and two corporations facing a May 6 trial on charges of mail and wire fraud, racketeering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice related to the contract award, which county supervisors canceled in January, 1983.

Last month, supervisors awarded a $12.5-million contract to Virginia-based Contel Page Systems to install a network of more than 8,000 new phones at 49 county offices.