More LAPD Officers Scrutinized as Probe of Yacht Thefts Widens

A far-flung investigation into a $1-million yacht-theft ring allegedly involving a Los Angeles police officer and a convicted bank robber is now focusing on other Los Angeles police officers, while also probing the possibility of illegal deals in narcotics and firearms, authorities say.

Los Angeles Police Department Internal Affairs investigators have questioned several officers who worked with Officer William E. Leasure, a 16-year police veteran, who was arrested in Oakland on May 29, along with Robert D. Kuns of Newport Beach, after they allegedly delivered a stolen yacht to would-be buyers. They are being held in the Contra Costa County Jail in lieu of $1-million bail each.

Search warrants have been executed at Leasure’s two houses in the Los Angeles area and the homes of at least two other police officers, sources familiar with the internal affairs investigation said.

Oakland investigators said other individuals are being examined as suspects in the alleged ring, which has law enforcement agencies from Canada to the Mexican border checking on similar yacht thefts.

Oakland police Sgts. Arthur Roth and Bill Godwin, heading the Northern California investigation in the case, said they have so far confirmed that six yachts were stolen, disguised and re-sold, and that insurance fraud also occurred in some instances. The number of stolen boats linked to the case could climb to 20, the investigators said.

“Basically, they have Southern California boats up here and Northern California boats down there,” Roth said. “But there are so many facets to this case.”

Los Angeles police officials declined to discuss details of their internal investigation.

“A lot of people are being talked to who merely know Leasure. What have you seen? What have you heard? Just basic investigation,” police spokesman Lt. Dan Cooke said in explanation.

Cooke acknowledged that some officers are being scrutinized closely, including one who had once reported that his boat had been stolen. He declined to comment on the reports that search warrants had been served on several dwellings.

Besides police agencies, federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Customs Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are studying the possibility that the suspects may have been involved in the trafficking of narcotics and firearms.

The Internal Revenue Service also is tracing money to two offshore bank accounts held by Kuns on Grand Cayman Island in the British West Indies, a source close to the Oakland investigation said.

Officers searching Leasure’s Northridge home found three illegal gun silencers, a fourth unassembled silencer and a stolen car, police said. Leasure also owns a town house in the Long Beach Marina, where authorities seized a boat.

Another source close to the investigation said that Leasure and Kuns were introduced by Kuns’ sister, who had worked with Leasure’s wife, Betsy Mogul, in the Los Angeles city attorney’s office. Mogul is a deputy city attorney who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the city attorney’s post in 1985. Kuns’ sister, Kay, was a deputy city attorney from December, 1976, until her resignation in January, 1979. She now has a private law practice in Santa Ynez.

Detectives said Betsy Mogul, who has taken a personal leave from her duties, is not viewed as a suspect and has cooperated with investigators.

Kuns and Leasure seem an unlikely pair. Kuns, 40, a Newport Beach resident, had spent two years at McNeil Island Federal Prison in Washington state for his conviction in the 1973 armed robbery of a San Diego bank.

Leasure, 39, was assigned to accident investigation in the LAPD’s Central Traffic Division. Several of his fellow officers said he had a good reputation, and they expressed shock at his arrest. They said he attributed his apparent wealth--two homes, boats, several cars and an airplane--to his wife.

“He’d say, ‘My wife takes good care of me,’ ” one officer said.

Roth said Kay Kuns told Oakland investigators that the four shared a common interest in scuba diving that took them on several trips to Mexico and one to Grand Cayman Island. Although recovered log books showed Mexican ports of call, records indicated that in some instances the travelers did not bother to check in with Customs, investigators said.

Multiple Thefts

Roth and Godwin said they believe that the alleged yacht-theft operation in some instances may have involved multiple thefts of the same boats, with crime partners in essence “stealing” each other’s boats to recover insurance money. The amount of theft believed generated by the six vessels impounded thus far exceeds $1 million in losses to original owners, insurance companies and defrauded buyers, authorities said.

The theft operation dates to at least 1983, the investigators said. It began to unravel on May 22, when Oakland police, acting on a tip from Long Beach police, visited a vessel docked in San Francisco Bay and determined that it had been stolen, disguised, re-registered and sold.

The new owners “were living on it, and we virtually took their home,” Roth said.

Tailed From Restaurant

Authorities learned that Kuns and Leasure were planning to deliver another boat to a Bay Area buyer, and made plans to move in as soon as it arrived. The buyer, working in cooperation with officers, took Leasure and Kuns to dinner, and police tailed them from the restaurant and waited at the 41-foot pleasure boat to make the arrest, Roth said.

A third suspect, Eugene Yancoski of Newport Beach, also was arrested at the same time, but charges were dropped, Roth said, explaining that Yancoski was a hired deckhand who apparently was unaware of the alleged illegal activity.