Indicted Deputies Tell of Cash Holdings : Corruption trial: They say they kept large sums at home, accumulated from gambling, saving loose change, inheritances, overtime, baby-sitting and outside work.

One deputy stuffed a shaving kit with hundred-dollar bills as an “emergency fund” in his bedroom closet. Another deputy stashed tens of thousands of dollars in a cookie tin and a locked box in his home. A third deputy kept thousands in an attic safe over his stepson’s bedroom.

The money, deputies said, came from refurbishing cars, baby-sitting, garage sales, savings and collecting loose change. Or from gambling winnings, spousal incomes, outside businesses and gifts from relatives.

None of the money came from stolen drug cash, they said.

Witnesses for five of the seven Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies accused of stealing money seized from drug dealers gave these financial scenarios in testimony before a federal jury in a corruption trial that resumes today.

The veteran officers--all former members of the Sheriff’s Department’s elite narcotics investigation teams--are accused of stealing $1.4 million during drug raids in 1988 and 1989 and spending much of that money on cars, boats, vacation homes and other luxuries.

During the six-week trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, prosecutors have produced a parade of federal agents, convicted drug dealers and a former sheriff’s sergeant in a bid to prove the theft allegations. Prosecutors also have called financial experts and Internal Revenue Service agents to attempt to show that the deputies spent money well beyond their means and made cash purchases shortly after drug raids.

But the deputies have produced their own witnesses and have taken the stand to explain the sources of their incomes and defend the practices of saving money at home and using cash for purchases.

Deputy Terrell H. Amers, for example, testified last week that he and his wife, Jan, who also worked as a sheriff’s deputy, had saved more than $45,000 in an attic safe in their home by January 1, 1988--the date that prosecutors claim the money-skimming conspiracy began.

Amers, a 22-year Sheriff’s Department veteran, said half that money was savings that he and his wife brought to their marriage in 1983, as well as $5,000 from his father-in-law and another $15,000 the couple saved from their salaries and from overtime. An additional $5,000 came from cash wedding gifts, the sale of a car and a court settlement, Amers told jurors.

With some of that money, the couple eventually purchased vacation property in Bullhead City, Ariz., partial interest in two boats, a satellite dish and other items, Amers said.

But Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas A. Hagemann charged that Amers and other deputies devised elaborate stories about the stashes of money because they “needed an explanation of where the cash was coming from.”

Amers insisted that the practice of keeping money at home was meant partly to hide his assets from an embittered former spouse.

“That was because my ex-wife had made threats against me that she would take me back to court every six months to see what money I had (saved) and file suit,” Amers said of his decision not to bank the money.

Another defendant, Deputy Daniel M. Garner, also testified that he accumulated more than $45,000 in cash that he kept at home--from an earlier severance settlement, money given to him by his ailing mother, cash gifts from other relatives and extra income he had saved from buying and selling cars at local auto swap meets.

Garner testified that he kept much of the money at home in a safe rather than in a bank because he distrusted financial institutions.

Deputy James R. Bauder testified that he and his wife saved money at home in a cookie tin, a security box and a safe and estimated that he, too, had saved more than $45,150 in cash by January, 1988. The bulk of that money came from refurbishing and selling old Volkswagens, garage sales, baby-sitting jobs by his wife and the couple’s practice of collecting loose change around their house, he said.

According to prosecutors, Bauder accumulated more than $79,500 in unexplained cash during 1988 and 1989--a figure that the deputy disputed. Bauder did tell jurors, however, that he did not report for income taxes some of the $45,000 he saved at home.

“I used it as supplemental income, and I never thought about it,” Bauder testified.

The other deputy who has taken the stand, John C. Dickenson, had been with the elite narcotics investigators team for only five months when the deputies were suspended. But Dickenson also testified that he kept an “emergency fund” of cash at home--about $3,000 stashed in a shaving kit that agents found when they searched the home last year.

As they cross-examined the deputies, prosecutors expressed incredulity at the cash surpluses and the officers’ explanations of how they accumulated their money. And as the trial nears a conclusion next week, three remaining deputies have yet to take the stand--Eufrasio G. Cortez, Ronald E. Daub and Macario M. Duran.

Government lawyers claim that Daub amassed more than $218,000 and Cortez accumulated more than $276,000 in unexplained cash during 1988 and 1989. Although it is unclear whether any of the three will take the stand, earlier testimony indicates that attorneys for Daub and Cortez will contend they received money from gambling winnings, from relatives and other legitimate income.

Daub’s brother, Reid, testified last week that his brother was a habitual and successful gambler who won $32,000 during a weekend of gambling in Las Vegas in June, 1988.

Daub’s mother, Shirley, said her son had another source of money to supplement his Sheriff’s Department pay: a cash inheritance from his dying father in 1971. Shirley Daub said her husband, who later died of cancer, left her $30,000 in a shoe box in their closet and gave similar shoe boxes of cash to his two sons.

“He told me to keep that money stashed and not to put it in the bank,” Shirley Daub testified.

Shirley Daub said she did just that for 17 years before using $20,000 of the money in 1988 as her contribution--along with $30,000 from Ron and $20,000 from Reid--toward a retirement home in Bullhead City. That same year, she said, she gave Daub another $10,000 in cash to buy a used car for her.

But the federal government seized both the Arizona property and the car, contending that Ron Daub bought them with stolen money.