Man Charged in Bombing of IRS Offices : Taxes: Costa Mesa resident was denied $9,000 in deductions during an audit.

An Orange County man authorities say was denied $9,000 in tax deductions during an Internal Revenue Service audit several years ago was arrested Thursday and charged with bombing IRS offices in Los Angeles.

Lawrence Lawler, special agent-in-charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, said Dean Harvey Hicks, 45, an aerospace engineer, was arrested without incident about 9 a.m. at his Costa Mesa home.

Investigators were led to Hicks after discovering that a car used in one of the bombings was stolen from his former employer, now-defunct Ford Aerospace in Newport Beach, Lawler said.

Hicks was charged with bombing a West Los Angeles building containing IRS offices in September, 1988, and the attempted bombing in February, 1990, of the same building. He remains a suspect in several other bombings dating from 1986, federal authorities said.

Residents of the quiet neighborhood where Hicks lives said the suspect lived alone. They described Hicks as a friendly man, who mostly kept to himself while gardening and caring for his cat.

Federal officials who searched Hicks’ garage for evidence Thursday morning said he requested after his arrest that investigators ask neighbors to care for his cat.

No injuries resulted from any of the bombings, the latest of which occurred April 1 near an IRS office in Fresno. That explosion ruptured gas lines, starting a fire.

Hicks allegedly had been denied $9,000 in charitable contribution deductions in the early 1980s, FBI spokeswoman Karen Gardner said.

In September, 1988, five bombs exploded in a stolen car parked in the underground garage of an IRS office building at 11500 Olympic Boulevard.

In February, 1990, a powerful chemical bomb that experts said could have leveled two city blocks was found in a pickup truck parked across the street from a West Los Angeles building housing IRS offices. That incident was followed by a letter signed “Up the IRS Inc.” to the Santa Monica Evening Outlook newspaper complaining of “high, unfair and ambiguous taxes.”

The couple who sold the truck used in the February, 1990, bombing helped a Los Angeles police artist draw a composite sketch of the man who bought it.

A car stolen from a Ford Aerospace parking lot was used in the 1988 West Los Angeles bombing. Police circulated the composite at the Ford facility and focused on Hicks as a suspect, learned of his tax difficulties, and discovered his handwriting matched that on an envelope containing an Up the IRS Inc. letter.

Hicks is also suspected in other, uncharged incidents, Gardner said.

On March 6, 1986, four pipe bombs were defused at the Culver City IRS office.

Seven pipe bombs, including two with live charges, were found in a federal building housing IRS offices in Laguna Niguel on March 2, 1987. Explosives were found at the base of a power pole in Laguna Niguel that might have provided power to an IRS office.

On March 20, 1989, pipe bombs were detonated on a power pole near an IRS office in West Los Angeles.

Another pipe bomb exploded near the Fresno IRS processing center on March 31, 1991.

In the attack April 1, 13 bombs were fired toward the Fresno center from a homemade mortar-type launcher. Nine of the bombs exploded. The duds helped authorities discover how they were manufactured.

The roof of the center and several cars were damaged. The building houses 5,000 IRS employees who process tax returns for California and much of the Western United States, a federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms bureau spokesman said.

Someone using the name Up the IRS Inc. assumed responsibility for that attack in a typed letter mailed to The Fresno Bee on April 4.

Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates called the arrest of Hicks “the most important made in this vicinity in many years . . . because the potential for these bombs going off was very great.