Dial-a-Porn Calls Traced to Nestande Aide

County officials Tuesday identified the person who made more than 100 calls to sexually explicit tape recordings from the office of Supervisor Bruce Nestande between 1985 and last June. The caller turned out to be a 23-year-old student intern working in Nestande’s office.

In a report to the Board of Supervisors, County Administrative Officer Larry Parrish said the caller, John Stoffel, had resigned from his job as a student intern and had paid $236.49 in restitution for the so-called dial-a-porn calls, each of which cost $2 plus a telephone company connection charge ranging from 22 cents to 78 cents. Parrish also said that as of last week such phone calls were being blocked by filtering capabilities added to the county’s Centrex telephone system.

Most of the calls from Nestande’s phones were made late at night or on weekends and holidays. Some, however, were made during business hours. A few were even made from other supervisors’ offices.

Stoffel, a student at Cal State Fullerton, had been a Republican political activist when he became a student intern in Nestande’s office in 1984 at $7.90-per-hour. Last year Nestande also appointed him to the county Fair Campaign Practices Commission.

Nestande, Republican candidate for secretary of state, was embarrassed politically when the calls on his telephone bills, which are public record, were revealed in August. At the time, Nestande strongly denied making the calls and requested an investigation.

“I talked to John about this as an employer and as a father,” Nestande, who has two sons of his own, said Tuesday. “He was apologetic. I did not ask him why he did it. I don’t want this to be the termination of John Stoffel’s career. He’s a young man who made a mistake. I think the $236 he paid back to the county is the least of the punishment he’s experiencing right now.”

Issues Statement

Nestande also issued a written statement saying: “This entire situation was unfortunate--for the young man involved, his fellow workers and the county as a whole. The issue is now a closed matter.”

Stoffel has been on a leave of absence since July to work at the Republican Party headquarters in Marin County.

“I’ve resigned from the job in Orange County and I’m sorry for what has happened, but other than that I have no comment,” Stoffel said in a telephone interview.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Maurice L. Evans said he declined to prosecute Stoffel for misuse of public property because Stoffel had made restitution, had no prior criminal record and was out of two jobs. “He’s been punished enough,” Evans said.

Stoffel had been a suspect from the start. Nestande previously said he found it suspicious that the calls disappeared from his phone bills at about the same time an intern in his office took a leave of absence in July, although he never accused Stoffel publicly.

Stoffel Interviewed

Evans said Stoffel confessed when a Sheriff’s Department investigator recently interviewed him in Northern California.

Parrish said Tuesday that the new filtering capability added to the county’s phone system blocks calls to the 976 prefix. The prefix is reserved by the telephone company for taped messages.

County officials said it cost $12,279 to install the blocking system, plus a monthly charge of $1,062 for the special filtering service. However, the same system automatically routes long distance calls to reduced-rate phone lines that were not being fully utilized before. The result, officials said, is savings averaging $8,634 per month.

Parrish said the new system affects phones that are part of the county’s Centrex system. A few are not part of that system, he said, but pose only a slight risk of abuse.