Key Witness Testifies on Skimming of Money : Deputies’ trial: He says he saw a fellow officer dump hundreds of thousands of dollars on a bed and then divide the cash to steal.

A former Los Angeles County sheriff’s sergeant who is the star witness in a money-skimming case against his former deputies testified Wednesday that he watched as one narcotics officer dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars on a bed and divided the cash to steal during an FBI sting.

Robert R. Sobel, the former leader of one of the sheriff’s elite major narcotics investigation teams, told jurors that the deputies who had been shadowing what they thought was a drug trafficker on Aug. 30, 1989, targeted the cash in a pattern familiar to his narcotics squad.

“The protocol was that the investigating officer would make the call if money was to be skimmed or not,” said Sobel, who began what is expected to be several days of testimony.

The deputies--six of whom were members of Sobel’s narcotics crew--are on trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on charges of stealing more than $1.4 million in cash seized from suspected drug dealers and money launderers.

Sobel, who already has pleaded guilty, is viewed by prosecutors and defense attorneys as the trial’s most important single witness, and his brief appearance Wednesday was the most dramatic in the weeklong proceeding.

Guided by Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas A. Hagemann, Sobel told jurors of his 19 years in the Sheriff’s Department, then moved quickly through a description of the FBI sting--and how the narcotics officers were tracking what they believed was an East Coast drug trafficker carrying about half a million dollars in cash. The supposed drug dealer turned out to be an FBI agent.

In describing their raid on the hotel suite, Sobel said the deputies detained the suspected dealer and then took hundreds of thousands of dollars that had been found in the suite. Although the sting had been videotaped--and portions of it shown earlier to the jurors--FBI surveillance cameras did not capture any footage of what Sobel said was deputies taking the money into a nearby hotel room from which they had conducted their surveillance.

Inside that room, Sobel said, Deputy Nancy A. Brown--who was the investigating officer in the case--dumped the cash on the bed and began counting what Sobel said was more than $450,000.

“Nancy separated the money. She separated a large pile of money,” Sobel recalled. “She said, ‘This is what we will book (as evidence)’ and put the rest in a small bag.”

Before Sobel could continue, Judge Edward Rafeedie recessed the trial for the day.

Defense attorneys were quick to challenge Sobel’s account.

The attorney for Brown, whose case has been severed from that of the other deputies on trial, disputed the former sergeant’s testimony in a telephone interview.

“This is a highly questionable guy with credibility problems,” said Roger Hanson, referring to FBI interviews in which Sobel has acknowledged involvement in planting drugs on some suspects and beating others.

Another defendant, Deputy James R. Bauder, who Sobel said had earlier grabbed bundles of cash from the hotel suite in an attempt to steal the money, also vehemently denied Sobel’s allegations.

“He is lying through his teeth,” Bauder said of his former boss. “And I intend to take the stand to challenge and refute what he says.”

Prosecutors contend that Sobel and the other narcotics officers skimmed $48,000 that night from $498,000 in bags in the hotel room.

In addition to Sobel’s testimony Wednesday, the jurors heard from a parade of federal agents who described seizing nearly $85,000 in cash, as well as financial records, cars, boats, jewelry and other valuables from the deputies’ homes and businesses in Southern California and Arizona. Included in the seized cash was $19,680 in marked money from the sting, investigators said.

In addition to Bauder, the other deputies on trial are Terrell H. Amers, Eufrasio G. Cortez, Ronald E. Daub, Daniel M. Garner, John C. Dickenson and Macario M. Duran.

Duran’s wife, Maria, was a defendant until Wednesday when Rafeedie severed her case from the others.

However, only hours later, federal prosecutors indicted Maria Duran, her husband and her mother for allegedly conspiring to obstruct the money-skimming investigation.

The criminal indictment claims that the Durans and Maria’s mother, Lilia Vazquez, attempted to conceal the source of an $88,500 down-payment on a Northridge home by telling federal investigators that Vazquez had lent the money to the couple. Vazquez, 60, was also accused of lying to a federal grand jury about the source of the money.

Maria Duran’s attorney, Scott Furstman, called the indictment “just one more attempt by the government to bring pressure on the Durans” to cooperate with the government and undermine her husband’s defense.

Times staff writer Charisse Jones contributed to this story.