Defendant in School Thefts to Cooperate

The brother-in-law of the alleged leader of a supply theft ring in the Los Angeles Unified School District pleaded no contest Monday to a misdemeanor charge of altering a school document and agreed to cooperate with authorities in testifying against others charged in the case.

Robert Graham Stokey III, 42, of Lancaster, whose sister, Wendy, is married to Melvin N. Tokunaga, the suspended deputy director of the school district’s custodial department, was also charged with one felony count of grand theft, but that charge was held in abeyance pending his further cooperation with prosecutors.

Tokunaga, 42, of Agua Dulce, was charged March 4 with one count each of conspiracy to commit grand theft and embezzlement, two counts of grand theft and two counts of embezzlement in a three-year series of thefts that Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner has estimated cost the school district at least $500,000.

Tokunaga’s superior, the suspended director of the district’s custodial department, James L. Riley, 55, of Lynwood, is alleged to have had knowledge of Tokunaga’s thefts, permitted them and benefited from them, but Reiner has said Tokunaga actually operated the ring. Riley has been charged with two counts of conspiracy and one count of embezzlement.

Stokey was the eighth person charged in the spreading investigation and the third to agree in court to cooperate with prosecutors.

Stokey was a pest control operator for the school district before resigning on March 4, the same day that Tokunaga and three others were charged.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Herbert Lapin said that Stokey served as “a personal valet” to Tokunaga in many of the operations of the alleged theft ring and that he had altered school invoices and made deliveries of school district goods, such as pesticides, to private suppliers who resold them.

But, he added, Stokey recently went to investigators voluntarily and took with him documents and information that have led the investigation into new channels. Lapin declined to elaborate, but he said they involve other thefts within the custodial department.

“He’s led us on to where we anticipate more arrests in two weeks,” Lapin said. “Those that cooperate with us will be allowed to surrender. Those who don’t will be arrested.”

Los Angeles Municipal Judge Glennette Blackwell on Monday delayed sentencing for Stokey until June 12 and released him on his own recognizance. Stokey could face up to a year in County Jail on the misdemeanor charge.

In another development, the lawyer for two businessmen who pleaded no contest last week to felony grand theft charges said that, in entering their pleas, his clients--Henry Masayoshi Shimohara, 69, of Torrance and George Michimasa Nakahara, 67, of Gardena--were not agreeing to Reiner’s charges that their firm of Lawndale Nurseries had helped school district employees steal more than $100,000 worth of goods.

Defense attorney Frank Rafferty said that all the actual charge had accused them of was stealing more than $400 worth of goods. He added that his clients would contest any move by the prosecution to get them to make full restitution for the $100,000 in goods.

Lapin responded that Shimohara and Nakahara had both been told before entering their pleas that they were accused of helping to steal the higher amount. The wording of the charge--”more than $400”--was a technicality, he said, a formulation consistent with state statutes to qualify the thefts as a felony.