Deputy’s Suit Claims Rights Were Violated in Drug Probe : Narcotics: One of suspended officers charges that he has been wrongfully branded as a criminal in the sheriff’s inquiry into alleged money skimming.

A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, one of 18 narcotics officers suspended in a money-skimming scandal, filed suit Monday claiming he was unlawfully relieved of duty and placed under virtual “house arrest” with no formal charges made against him.

In the first legal challenge to a widening local and federal investigation, Deputy Eufrasio G. Cortez contends that he and other suspended officers have been “punitively transferred” from their narcotics jobs while a year-old inquiry struggles to determine whether drug money was stolen during raids.

Cortez also charged that the current investigation is casting a pall on local law enforcement and is “destroying Southern California’s anti-drug enforcement programs.”

The 14-year veteran was suspended Sept. 1 along with eight other members of an elite crew that investigated major narcotics cases. Several weeks later, the department’s remaining major narcotics teams were dismantled and nine more deputies were taken off the job in a corruption case that Sheriff Sherman Block has called the worst in his seven-year tenure.

Block, who said the investigation began last October, has identified only the original nine suspended officers.

In his Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, which names the sheriff and the county as defendants, Cortez accused Block of violating his rights by identifying the deputy--a move he contends has ruined his career as an undercover officer and endangered his family.

“They’ve taken him off his job, publicly branded him and accused him of criminal misconduct in the newspapers,” said Gregory G. Petersen, Cortez’s attorney, who is seeking to have his client immediately reinstated.

“They’ve called my guy a liar and a thief, and now they can put up or shut up,” said Petersen, who claims that some of the allegations against his client stem from past complaints already investigated and dismissed by the Sheriff’s Department.

Cortez has emerged as a major target in the ongoing probe, sources close to the investigation said. Federal agents have searched a desk at his Whittier narcotics office and his house. They also seized a power boat, home furnishings and an Arizona vacation house. An Internal Revenue Service affidavit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, alleged that seized drug money was used to pay for some of the property.

But in his lawsuit, Cortez denied any wrongdoing and claimed he had been “told less than the news media about the reasons for the punitive action taken against him and has no written or oral explanation” for his paid suspension.

While on suspension, Cortez and other officers have been confined to their homes and ordered to report to their department on a regular basis, which the lawsuit said was tantamount to “house arrest.”

Cortez added that he has asked the Sheriff’s Department for an opportunity to review any evidence against him and has also demanded a hearing into the allegations.

In addition to Cortez, Block has announced the suspensions of deputies Terrell H. Amers, James R. Bauder, Nancy A. Brown, Ronald E. Daub, John C. Dickenson, Daniel M. Garner and Michael J. Kaliterna and Sgt. Robert R. Sobel.

A sheriff’s spokeswoman said Monday that officials had not seen a copy of the lawsuit and would have no comment.

However, in an Oct. 10 letter, Gordon W. Trask, senior deputy county counsel, told Petersen that his client has not been subjected to punitive action and that Cortez’s “assignment to his residence is normal under the circumstances.

“We do not believe that any rights of Deputy Cortez have been violated by the Sheriff’s Department,” Trask wrote.

Cortez was a narcotics investigator for eight years and was a member of one of the department’s four teams investigating major drug cases when he was suspended, according to the lawsuit, which detailed for the first time the undercover work he performed for the Sheriff’s Department.

The Spanish-speaking Cortez said he had been recently assigned to undercover work with the IRS, laundering money for Colombian nationals involved in drug trafficking. In that role, Cortez said he would engage in “what is otherwise unlawful activity concerning the handling of monies as well as the handling of narcotics.”

During “sting” operations, for example, Cortez said, he would pose as a money launderer and routinely forward as much as $300,000 in cash from drug traffickers to the IRS. The federal agency, in turn, would “deliver the monies, less a 5% commission for handling the monies, to Colombian drug kingpins or their representatives” abroad, Cortez said.

In many cases where money was seized by narcotics investigators, Cortez said, suspects found with the cash were not arrested but merely detained--and released after signing a disclaimer that they did not own the money.

Federal investigators contend that before Cortez was assigned to the IRS, he and other sheriff’s deputies were siphoning off some of the cash seized in drug raids--an allegation the officers have denied.

Although Cortez had been working for several months on the special money-laundering cases, Petersen said that federal investigators, including IRS agents, were unaware of his assignment when they arrived to search the deputy’s home. As they conducted their search, the agents were startled to hear the sound of Cortez’s telephone pager beeping, Petersen said.

“When the agents asked him what the beeper was for, he told them that it was the IRS--their own agency--calling for him to pick up some more money to launder,” Petersen said. “As far as they were concerned, he was still working for them.”