He Accused Deputies of Stealing $527,000, Prisoner Testifies : Cocaine: The complaint was made months before a money-skimming probe against narcotics officers began, he says.

A convicted drug dealer, now imprisoned as a major cocaine trafficker, testified Wednesday that he had accused Los Angeles County sheriff’s narcotics officers of stealing $527,000--months before investigators began probing similar theft allegations.

Oscar Danilo Lovo, who also uses the name Juan Carlos Restrepo, told jurors in the money-skimming trial of seven sheriff’s narcotics officers that some of the defendants had stolen the drug cash from his Woodland Hills apartment and had lied about the circumstances of his Jan. 26, 1988, arrest.

Lovo had been followed from his San Fernando Valley home to Moreno Valley in Riverside County by a narcotics investigations team that included six of the deputies now on trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. After Lovo was stopped, the officers discovered 111 kilos of cocaine in his car and then raided several other locations linked to the drug trafficker.

But Lovo, testifying for the prosecution, said Wednesday that when the deputies raided his apartment they stole $527,000 he had hidden in a suitcase--money that he had received for selling 50 kilos of cocaine.

The deputies also lied in their police report about finding two duffel bags of cocaine in “plain view” in the back seat of his car rather than in the trunk, said Lovo, 32, who is now in state prison serving a 15-year sentence on drug charges.

Lovo testified that he sent a note in April, 1988, to a sheriff’s deputy who worked at the Riverside County jail--where he was being held--complaining that Los Angeles County deputies had stolen his money. That allegation came months before Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials formally opened an investigation into the money-skimming scandal, prosecutors said.

The defendants, all members of elite narcotics investigation teams, are accused of stealing more than $1.4 million during drug raids in 1988 and 1989.

Lovo’s appearance was the first of what is expected to be a parade of drug dealers or money launderers who claim they were victimized by the defendants.

Following Lovo to the stand Wednesday was Orlando Yepes, whose Sylmar home was also raided in 1988 by deputies. During that raid, narcotics officers discovered 392 kilos--or 862 pounds--of cocaine at his home and $40,000 in cash that prosecutors allege was stolen by the deputies.

Defense attorneys moved quickly to attempt to undercut the credibility of the prosecution witnesses. They emphasized that Yepes, whose drug case was dropped because of the money-skimming scandal, had stored some of the cocaine under his children’s beds where it was found by deputies. And defense lawyers also pressed Lovo on whether he had offered a $100,000 bribe to the Riverside County deputy to testify in his own trial.

Lovo admitted asking the deputy how much he was paid and telling the officer he had “powerful friends.” But he denied that he ever offered the deputy any money.

“I told him I was going to be 100,000 times grateful if he said he saw the (cocaine) in the trunk of the car,” Lovo testified.

Lovo’s testimony came on the same day that U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie removed a woman juror from the 12-member panel. Rafeedie said the juror’s mother had died, and he replaced her with a man, one of four alternates. That changed the composition of the jury to seven men and five women.