Corruption Trial Begins for Ex-Drug Agent : Law enforcement: The former officer went on a five-year crime spree, stealing money and narcotics, prosecutors say.

Three U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrested in the agency’s worst corruption scandal betrayed their mission to hunt down drug dealers and, instead, became narcotics traffickers themselves, a federal prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.

Describing the case as a “five-year spree of corruption,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Joyce Karlin said the scandal was international in scope, ranging from “some of the worst neighborhoods of New York” to “the most sophisticated banking capitals of the world.”

Karlin’s opening statement to jurors marked the beginning of a federal court trial in Los Angeles for former DEA Agent Darnell Garcia, 43, of Rancho Palos Verdes. He is charged with narcotics trafficking, money laundering and funneling intelligence information to a fugitive drug dealer.

Two other former DEA agents, John Jackson, 41, of Claremont and Wayne Countryman, 47, of Walnut, pleaded guilty to drug-trafficking charges last August and are expected to testify against Garcia in exchange for possible reduced prison terms.

But Garcia, a black-belt karate expert who joined the DEA in 1978, has steadfastly proclaimed his innocence.

Prosecutors allege that Garcia amassed a $3-million bank account in Luxembourg and financed an expensive Southern California home through drug trafficking.

Defense attorney Mark Overland countered these allegations, saying that Garcia worked for an Italian-based jewelry firm from which he made substantial profits.

Garcia, he said, was “in a business we’re not proud of”--smuggling gold jewelry past U.S. Customs to avoid paying duty--”but it’s not the drug business.”

Overland told the jury, however, that the government did not obtain the jewelry firm’s records because the owner “has destroyed” them.

A fugitive for seven months before he was arrested in Luxembourg in July, 1989, Garcia was subsequently extradited to the United States and is being held without bail.

His trial, in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr., is expected to last about two months. It is viewed by the government as the final chapter in the worst corruption scandal in the DEA’s 17-year history.

In outlining the prosecution’s case, Karlin told jurors that in October, 1984, Garcia and Jackson stole more than two pounds of heroin from the agency’s evidence vault in downtown Los Angeles.

Karlin also alleged that Garcia, along with Jackson, was involved five years ago in “a theft that gave new meaning to the definition of corruption”--the theft of 180 kilos, (about 396 pounds) of suspected Colombian cocaine they found in a Pasadena condominium.

The three agents “made a fortune” selling the cocaine, she said.

In 1986, Karlin said, Garcia deposited almost $800,000 in his Swiss bank account and Jackson and Countryman deposited more than $500,000 each in their Swiss accounts.

Karlin branded Garcia “a traitor” who warned a drug dealer that he was about to be arrested and who allegedly hid two other fugitive drug dealers in his downtown apartment at Bunker Hill Towers.

Additionally, in a memorandum put into court records, Karlin and co-prosecutor Stefan D. Stein said evidence shows that Garcia and two fugitive drug dealers attempted to burglarize a Malibu Colony home in August, 1987, which, they said, “proves defendant Garcia’s criminal association” with the drug dealers.

The first major prosecution witness Tuesday was Mahlon Steward, a 60-year-old convicted drug dealer from Brooklyn, N.Y. Because of a serious heart condition, Steward’s testimony was videotaped and replayed for the jury.

Steward described how his street network sold narcotics supplied to him by Garcia and Jackson and how he mailed the drug profits back to the agents, sometimes directly to them at the DEA’s Los Angeles headquarters.

The defense attacked Steward’s credibility, noting that he is a “professional informant” who has admitted lying twice to a federal grand jury investigating the agents.