Deputies’ Accuser Waits to Testify : Trial: An ex-sheriff’s sergeant has said that seven colleagues skimmed drug money. As their trial starts, the defense has already begun attacking his credibility.

As seven Los Angeles County sheriff’s narcotics officers began their money-skimming trial Tuesday, their chief accuser waits in a secret location, poised to testify in a corruption case that may prove to be the most important in local law enforcement history.

Robert Rhea Sobel, 45, has emerged as the heart--and, defense attorneys say, the Achilles’ heel--of the federal government’s case against his former subordinates, who are charged with stealing more than $1.4 million from drug traffickers.

Sobel, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and theft charges, is not scheduled to testify until weeks from now. His absence Tuesday during the first day of jury selection did not diminish his importance as the key informant in a scandal that affects not only the indicted deputies but other narcotics officers.

In summaries of FBI interviews obtained by The Times, the former sheriff’s sergeant admitted receiving about $150,000 in stolen drug money and said that few officers on his narcotics crews were immune from corruption.

He described narcotics officers searching for an opportunity to steal anything--from petty cash, leather jackets and a camera to mink coats and hundreds of thousands of dollars--from suspected drug dealers. He also told of deputies bickering over their share of the stolen money.

The alleged money-skimming was “a dirty little secret” among narcotics officers that tainted cases handled by major narcotics units as well as deputies in local stations, Sobel told FBI agents.

At one point, Sobel said he spent his share of the stolen money on stocks, two grand pianos, a sailboat, automobiles and vacations in Tahoe and Las Vegas.

He told investigators that thefts were so widespread in the Sheriff Department’s that deputies yearned to move from station crews, where the size of the thefts was relatively small, to the elite major investigative teams, where deputies sometimes had access to more than $1 million in seized cash.

“Everybody pretty much already knew what the game was,” Sobel said in an FBI report. Using a baseball analogy, he added, “It was like moving from AAA (in the minor leagues) at one of the station narco units to the major leagues.”

The Sheriff’s Department, FBI and U.S. attorney’s office have declined to comment on Sobel’s statements.

Defense attorneys already have begun attacking Sobel’s credibility.

“This man is the biggest liar who ever walked on the face of the Earth,” James Riddet, who represents Deputy Eufrasio G. Cortez, said during Tuesday’s hearing.

“I think it’s ultimately going to get to a credibility contest between Sobel and the other deputies, and who the jury is going to believe,” said Vicki I. Podberesky, attorney for Deputy James R. Bauder, after the hearing.

Sobel’s attorney, Mark Beck, said, “The jury will be quite able to assess his credibility. And I’m confident that they are going to believe him.”

In all, the former sheriff’s sergeant, who began cooperating with authorities last fall, has implicated about three dozen past and present narcotics officers in a variety of acts of wrongdoing during a series of FBI interviews covering several months.

Sobel also named four narcotics officers at the Los Angeles Police Department as participants in alleged thefts, beatings of drug suspects and planting of evidence, according to FBI reports. He also alleged that a narcotics officer at a suburban police department who often worked with sheriff’s deputies was aware of the planting of narcotics on one drug suspect and “had no problem with that.”

Those officers named by Sobel, and contacted by The Times, have maintained their innocence, and many expressed surprise and anger at the accusations made by the man who will take the stand as the prosecution’s chief witness in the money-skimming trial.

In May, FBI documents said, Sobel told investigators that one Los Angeles police officer had taken a bag of cocaine from the trunk of a car and arranged to have it planted in a house some distance away during a joint operation with sheriff’s deputies.

Sobel described another case in which he said Los Angeles police raided a South Los Angeles home and beat a suspect, at one point raking his back with the sharp spine of one of his tropical fish. As the victim screamed, Sobel said, a police lieutenant outside heard his cries but did nothing except to admonish the officer to be “ ‘cooler’ about this type of thing in the future,” the report said.

One deputy, who also was present at both locations, disputed Sobel’s description of the incidents and said Sobel was lying about the details in an effort to obtain a more favorable sentence when the money-skimming trial is completed.

The police officers, under investigation by the department and FBI, have not been disciplined, although they have been relegated to administrative duties. The Police Department has declined to comment on the investigation.

Sixteen deputies--many of them named by Sobel--have been suspended by the Sheriff’s Department and remain the targets of the 2-year-old investigation.

In that time, Sobel remains the only narcotics officer who has pleaded guilty and agreed to testify for the government.

If his statements are true, his descriptions of the Sheriff’s Department’s narcotics operations portray a litany of misconduct that is unrivaled in its scope and firsthand detail.

Among other things, the ex-sergeant told federal investigators that:

* Every narcotics crew in the Sheriff’s Department had a “kitty” in which some of the money seized in drug raids was used to pay informants and buy weapons and tools. In one case, Sobel said, an informant was paid half of the $30,000 seized during a drug raid, and lieutenants advised him that informants “should be tipped” with seized drug cash.

* One crew had stocked the Lennox station with new electronics equipment, including a color television, stereo and video recorder stolen from a Colombian drug trafficker.

* In August, 1985, he had told superiors that he suspected that a special sheriff’s team at Lennox was involved in skimming money from drug seizures to pay informants and make drug buys. New procedures were put in place, he said, but no one was apparently disciplined.

* As his share of a 1988 theft, he was given $50,000 in a plastic shopping bag in the parking lot of the narcotics headquarters in Whittier. Deputies also divided stolen money in a motel room and in a Santa Fe Springs shopping mall.

* He never witnessed any thefts of drug money by federal narcotics agents who participated in raids with deputies. He said a deputy once boasted about stealing money “out from under the nose of the DEA.” On another occasion he scotched plans for a theft when an IRS agent suddenly appeared nearby.

* A deputy stole a camera from one drug suspect, then used it to take surveillance photos in an unrelated case at another location. When the photos were processed, the drug dealer’s personal photos were among the images on the film.

“Sobel remembers thinking to himself that (the deputy) did not even bother to reload the camera when he stole it,” the FBI summary said.

Although other narcotics officers have described Sobel’s claims as outrageous, federal prosecutors hope to corroborate Sobel’s allegations with testimony from drug traffickers who contend that money and valuables were stolen during drug raids. To buttress their case, the prosecutors also plan to use a videotaped FBI sting and Sobel’s secret tape recordings of other deputies.

In addition to Bauder and Cortez, the other deputies who attended Tuesday’s hearing were Ronald E. Daub, Macario M. Duran, Terrell H. Amers, Daniel M. Garner and John C. Dickenson. Duran’s wife, Maria, is also on trial, accused of using financial transactions to hide stolen drug money.

Two other defendants, Deputies Nancy A. Brown and Michael J. Kaliterna, have had their cases severed from the others.

A pool of 71 people--from which 12 jurors and four alternates will be chosen--was selected Tuesday, but defense attorneys also spent the morning asking U.S. District Judge Edward R. Rafeedie to compel prosecutors to turn over additional information about any misconduct allegations against Sobel.

Riddet, Cortez’s attorney, said it was clear that in exchange for Sobel’s testimony, prosecutors had agreed not to indict the former sergeant for dozens of acts of misconduct.

“It’s important to show the jury just how big a deal that is,” he told the court. “It’s the deal of the century.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas Hagemann, who declined to discuss the Sobel interviews, would not comment on Sobel’s arrangement with prosecutors except to say, “The plea bargain agreement speaks for itself.”

The Sheriff’s Department, through a spokesman, also declined to comment on Sobel’s statements or any investigation into the ex-sergeant, who was allowed to retire in April after 19 years in the department. Sheriff’s officials said there was no legal barrier to granting Sobel’s retirement request despite his guilty plea.

As for Sobel, a hard-charging sergeant nicknamed “El Diablo,” who rallied his deputies with the French Foreign Legion slogan “March or Die,” his story to investigators was almost cinematic:

“At this location, (the deputy) told Sobel ‘if you wise up and play your cards right, I can make you a millionaire, I share with everyone. I don’t cut anyone out,’ ” the FBI report said.

“At this time, (the deputy) grabbed Sobel’s face and kissed him on the lips and stated, ‘We can be rich, baby.’ ”