Trial to Start for 7 Deputies in Skimming Case

Folded in a plain envelope and postmarked from Long Beach, the typewritten letter arrived in October, 1988, on the desks of Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block and several of his top aides.

“I have come to the point where I have to tell someone what I know,” the anonymous author began. “I am worried about my husband and my children and I am tired of living like a Mafia wife. The money doesn’t make up for this living hell.”

The writer said she was in anguish because her husband, a deputy in one of the Sheriff’s Department’s elite narcotics teams, had joined his partners in stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from drug dealers.

“I am afraid what will happen to us if he gets caught,” she went on. “At the same time I want him to get caught so this will end.”

It was that one-page letter, according to investigators, that tipped authorities to a money-skimming scandal that has become the worst corruption case in the recent history of the nation’s largest Sheriff’s Department.

Two years later, the trial for the first seven indicted deputies--accused of conspiring to steal more than $1.4 million from suspected drug traffickers--is scheduled to begin Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The wife of one deputy is also a defendant in what looms as a months-long trial.

“This is probably the most important case the department is facing in the 30 years I’ve been around,” said Undersheriff Robert Edmonds. “We want to put the matter in front of the court and behind us.”

In all, 10 sheriff’s narcotics officers have been indicted. Another 16 deputies have been suspended. And five Los Angeles Police Department narcotics officers have found themselves under investigation.

The allegations, meanwhile, have since expanded beyond the charges against the indicted deputies to include claims that narcotics officers planted evidence, falsified police reports, lied to a grand jury, beat suspects and stole money, valuables and drugs.

The trial, which will take place in a courtroom with a specially built platform to accommodate the large number of participants, is expected to affect not only the defendants but the current investigations and the Sheriff’s Department itself.

The department will be subjected to intense scrutiny, affording the public an inside--and unvarnished--look at how the agency went about its war on drugs.

High-ranking sheriff’s officials are expected to take the stand along with convicted drug dealers, former and present narcotics officers, investigators and law enforcement experts. And the prosecution alone has indicated 200 witnesses are ready to testify.

Both sides agree that the most explosive testimony will come from the federal government’s chief witness, a former sheriff’s sergeant who already has pleaded guilty to money-skimming charges and has admitted to participating in thefts as a narcotics officer as far back as 1985.

Robert R. Sobel, who led the team of indicted deputies, began cooperating with federal investigators last fall and told FBI investigators that stealing money was commonplace throughout the sheriff’s narcotics bureau and sometimes involved Los Angeles police officers, according to FBI reports.

“All of us are holding our breath,” said one top narcotics officer from a local law enforcement agency that sometimes works with the Sheriff’s Department. “No matter what happens, everyone is going to come out soiled in this one.”

Sources close to the defense said prosecutors approached some defendants seeking someone to corroborate the testimony of Sobel, but none of the other deputies had cooperated with the prosecution.

“I think (prosecutors) thought they would just indict these people and a bunch of them (deputies) will roll over, and then they would have a neat little package,” said Terrence Roden, attorney for Deputy Macario Duran. “But it didn’t happen. Now, it comes down to Sobel and whether the jury thinks he is a believable witness.”

Prosecutor Thomas Hagemann refused to comment on whether any overtures had been made to the defendants or to discuss any other specifics about the case.

The money-skimming case has had a major impact on local law enforcement.

In the wake of the investigation, Block dismantled the four major investigative teams that pulled in much of the department’s $34 million in seized drug money in 1988 and annually ranked among the largest seizures by local law enforcement agencies.

For the first time, mandatory drug tests were ordered for the 8,000 sworn officers in the department, and a new department policy requires the rotation of narcotics officers every five years.

In both federal and state courts, charges against dozens of accused drug dealers have been dismissed or reduced because deputies implicated in the money-skimming scandal were key witnesses. Convicted drug dealers have had their sentences reduced and one was released from prison.

Since their indictments and suspensions without pay, several of the deputies have been working as truck drivers, one has become a construction supervisor and another is working at a friend’s cellular phone business.

“This is a scary deal for us, but we’re anxious to tell our story,” said Deputy Daniel M. Garner. “It may take a long time, and it’s going to be painful. But we’re not the bad guys in all this.”

Garner, with 18 years in the department, and his fellow defendants include senior officers responsible for some of the department’s most successful drug cases.

They include Medal of Valor winner John C. Dickenson, and a former Marine, James R. Bauder, whose father is a retired sheriff’s officer.

Eufrasio G. Cortez, a veteran undercover agent with expertise in money-laundering cases, was working with the Internal Revenue Service in an undercover operation when he was suspended last September. As FBI agents searched his house, Cortez was still receiving messages on his pager from IRS colleagues asking him to set up another undercover buy.

Duran, who is standing trial with his wife, Maria, also was considered a skillful undercover operative who once set up the same cocaine ring for a major bust, twice within a matter of days.

The other defendants--Deputies Terrell H. Amers, Nancy A. Brown, Ronald Daub and Michael J. Kaliterna--are also veteran officers averaging nearly 19 years of experience with the department, most on narcotics duty.

If convicted, however, they face possible sentences and penalties ranging from a maximum of 128 years and a $3.6 million fine for Cortez to 13 years and a $600,000 fine for Duran.

In what prosecutors say was a two-year conspiracy, the narcotics officers are accused of stealing money after arresting or detaining a suspected drug dealer or money launderer. Sometimes the officers would obtain a statement from the alleged traffickers disowning the money, the prosecutors said, and in other instances the deputies would skim money they had seized before submitting the rest as evidence.

That money was then used to buy vacation homes in Arizona, luxury cars, boats, jewelry, stocks and other valuables, the prosecutors allege.

The trials of Brown and Kaliterna were severed from the others after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the panel will review a legal dispute over the seizure of evidence from the two deputies, including cash.

Both deputies have maintained their innocence, and Leonard Levine, Kaliterna’s attorney, said his client was disappointed with the delay. “We want this case to get over with,” Levine said.

A videotaped sting, which took place on Aug. 30, 1989, at a Sherman Oaks hotel, and marked money allegedly stolen by deputies during that raid are expected to be a central part of the government’s case.

Although Judge Edward Rafeedie has ruled that the audio portions of the tape cannot be used as evidence, prosecutors are expected to show the video to the jury.

The tape shows the deputies detaining two purported drug dealers and confiscating $450,000 in cash. In truth, the men were undercover federal agents, and prosecutors intend to argue that the deputies at the hotel skimmed $48,000 during that raid. Some of that money was later found in the homes or property of four deputies during searches last fall, prosecutors will assert.

Defense attorneys, in turn, will challenge the government’s assertions and will contend that gaps in the videotape suggest it may have been altered. “These gaps occur at critical moments during the electronic surveillance of the sting operation,” said Vicki I. Podberesky, Bauder’s attorney, in court papers.

None of the marked money was found in Sobel’s house. In a summary of an FBI interview only four days later, Sobel told investigators that he had hidden $12,000 from the sting in a secret compartment of his oak desk that was overlooked by FBI agents.

Fearing that the money was marked, the summary said, Sobel then took the cash to the Long Beach Marina and drove to a bridge going to Seal Beach, “parked in the Marina Shopping Center and dropped the currency where he felt there was a strong current.”

In addition to the videotape, the government prosecutors said they will use secretly taped conversations between Sobel and some of his deputies, the testimony of narcotics traffickers and money launderers who claim money was stolen from them and financial records attempting to show that the narcotics officers were spending money far beyond their income.

Some defendants, in turn, will seek to prove that they had legitimate outside income that allowed them to make the purchases.

In Daub’s case, partial grand jury transcripts show that family members testified they helped him buy the Arizona property. According to an FBI report contained in court records, Daub told investigators that he had also received some money from his father and made enough money gambling--including $26,000 on one Las Vegas trip--to supplement his income.

Asked by federal agents whether he reported that income, Daub said he did not because he was uncertain how much he had won or lost at the gambling tables, court records show.

“My client looks forward to proving his innocence,” said Daub’s attorney, Jay Lichtman.

Daub and several other defendants are facing IRS charges that they allegedly failed to report their unexplained income--which prosecutors claim came from drug money.

Some deputies and their defense attorneys, meanwhile, said those tax charges may prove more troublesome to the defense than the corruption case.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Hagemann said that prosecutors are confident that both the tax and corruption charges can be proven.

“Nobody really likes to look forward to prosecuting people in law enforcement,” he said, “but some things have to be done.”