Indictment of Ex-L.A. Officer Outlines County Drug Deals

A fired Los Angeles police officer was indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday for cocaine sales and conspiracy for allegedly running a $100,000-a-week drug ring that did some of its business in Orange County.

Modesto Benigno Perales, 38, a 12-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department who was fired earlier this year for misuse of law enforcement computer files, was indicted along with two others, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

The indictment said the three were involved in two separate deals in March, one made at the Countryside Inn in Costa Mesa and another completed at the Rodeway Inn in Newport Beach, for a total of 1,438 grams of cocaine.

An informant led narcotics investigators to the drug operation, which was wholesaling between 7 and 10 kilograms of cocaine each week in Orange County and adjoining areas of Los Angeles County, according to a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The DEA spokesman said Perales had recently traveled to Colombia to arrange the importing of 320 kilograms of cocaine into the United States.

Perales, who worked in Watts, was suspended in 1987 and then fired in January for insubordination after he was found to have used a police computer for outside business. The two accomplices named in the four-count indictment were Maurice Hernando, 28, of Santa Ana and Oscar Hugo Hernandez, 43 of Anaheim.