Bomb Suspect May Plead Guilty Today : Crime: The engineer from Costa Mesa is accused of a series of attacks against the Internal Revenue Service.

An engineer from Orange County is expected to plead guilty today to charges that he launched a string of bomb attacks on Internal Revenue Service offices, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday.

Dean Harvey Hicks of Costa Mesa has agreed to plead guilty to three counts of using a destructive device against a federal facility and one count of trying to impede the IRS, Assistant U.S. Atty. George Newhouse said.

Hicks has also agreed to plead guilty later to one count related to his most recent attack, the firing of 13 mortar rounds on an IRS facility in Fresno on April Fools’ Day, Newhouse said. The attack caused extensive damage to the building and nearby cars, but no one was injured.

His combined guilty pleas in the Los Angeles and Fresno cases carry a possible 43 years in prison and $1.2 million in fines, Newhouse said.

Hicks, 45, was originally charged with 18 counts that could have led to a maximum of 110 years in prison and $4.5 million in fines.

Hicks’ lawyer, Deputy Federal Public Defender Harriet Hawkins, declined to discuss a plea agreement but confirmed that Hicks was expected to appear today before U.S. District Judge Laughlin E. Waters.

An electrical engineer at Loral Corp. in Newport Beach, Hicks, according to prosecutors, has harbored a grudge against the IRS since 1981, when the agency disallowed an $8,500 deduction in connection with the Universal Life Church and assessed a hefty penalty against him.

Shortly after his arrest July 11, Hicks confessed to the bombing attempts in Laguna Niguel, West Los Angeles and Fresno between 1987 and 1991 and said he was furious because an IRS employee laughed at him when he called to ask a question, federal officials said.

The attacks injured no one and caused little or moderate property damage.

Investigators discovered what they described as “a virtual bomb factory” in Hicks’ garage. They later matched his handwriting to some found on the envelopes of letters claiming responsibility for some of the attacks on behalf of a group called “Up The IRS Inc.”

The FBI found that Hicks’ job gave him access to some materials used in the bombings and traced the purchase of other explosive components to him.

Hicks is accused of firing five mortar rounds on March 2, 1987, at the Chet Holifield federal building in Laguna Niguel, which housed IRS offices, and allegedly tied a pipe bomb to a power pole in the hills nearby on July 8, 1988.

Three times, Hicks targeted an IRS facility in the 11000 block of West Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, according to prosecutors. A car bomb exploded in an underground garage there on Sept. 19, 1988, and three pipe bombs were found tied to power poles a block away on March 20, 1989.

But the most potentially dangerous attack came on Feb. 22, 1990, when a truck parked near the West Olympic Boulevard office caught fire after it was hit by several mortar rounds.

Firefighters put out the flames before they realized that the truck carried 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, which could have leveled two city blocks, killed hundreds of people and created a 40-foot-wide crater if detonated, officials said.

Although Hicks admitted all the bombings to the FBI, his anticipated guilty pleas cover only the Laguna Niguel attack of March, 1987, and the two in West Los Angeles in September, 1988, and February, 1990, Newhouse said. The Fresno count stems from a threatening letter Hicks sent to the Fresno Bee in which he claimed responsibility for the attack there, Newhouse added.