Garcia Links His Fortune to Smuggled Gold : Crime: Ex-DEA agent, on trial for drug trafficking, tells jurors he made more than $3 million from bringing chain into the country.

Former federal drug agent Darnell Garcia told jurors Tuesday that he amassed more than $3 million through commissions he received from jewelry smuggling, not, as the government contends, through drug trafficking.

Testifying at his trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Garcia described how he smuggled gold chain into the country by circumventing U.S. Customs at Los Angeles International Airport through the use of his federal agent identification card and special airport security keys.

Garcia said officials from an Italian firm which employed him in the 1980s would load up to 200 pounds of gold chain aboard airliners, stowing it in the passenger compartment. Garcia said he would board the planes when they landed at Los Angeles International and--using a luggage cart--haul the chain around customs and out to the street.

The chain weighed so much, Garcia said, that he had a friend “modify the cart” with extra steel so it wouldn’t collapse under the chain’s weight. The $3 million was generated through hefty commissions he made smuggling the gold chain into the United States, he said.

Garcia, 44, of Rancho Palos Verdes, is charged with drug trafficking, money laundering and leaking intelligence information to a fugitive drug dealer. The former Drug Enforcement Administration agent is not charged with jewelry smuggling.

It was Garcia’s third day on the witness stand in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr.

By November, 1983, Garcia said, he had accumulated $100,000 in smuggling fees from the Italian firm, Oro Aurora, which had an office in the Los Angeles jewelry district. At that point, he said, he took the money out of his house safe and opened a numbered account at a Swiss Bank Corp. branch near the Italian border.

“I had no way of justifying my income,” Garcia said of his decision to place the cash in a Swiss--rather than an American--bank account. He described the Swiss account as “tax-free and safe from the IRS.”

Oro Aurora’s owner, Pietro Saltarelli, said in a videotaped deposition that he did pay Garcia commissions for smuggling gold chain, but that the commissions did not amount to more than $200,000.

Garcia’s date books, a key to his defense, are undergoing government analysis to determine their authenticity. On Tuesday, he again used his calendar notes to recall his smuggling commissions.

Referring to the $3.2 million Garcia has on deposit with a Swiss Bank Corp. branch in Luxembourg, defense attorney Mark Overland asked: “How did you get that money?”

“Smuggling jewelry,” Garcia replied.

“Was any of the money the product of any kind of drug transaction?” Overland asked.

“No,” Garcia said.