Former Deputy Gets 5-Year Prison Term in Stolen Credit Card Scam

A former sheriff’s deputy was sentenced to five years in state prison Tuesday in a scam in which he stopped motorists--most of them elderly men--for trumped-up traffic violations and then stole their credit cards, racking up thousands of dollars in charges for electronics and sports equipment.

Edward A. Perez, who pleaded guilty in December to nine counts of credit card fraud, was sentenced after a parade of victims told Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito that the scheme, in which Perez was joined by two other officers from the Temple City sheriff’s station and a civilian, had shattered their faith in law enforcement.

“To steal from senior citizens who, for the most part, are on Medicare and who are trying to make it through difficult times . . . I think it puts a black mark on the person who did it and it puts a black mark on all the departments,” said Leo House, 75, of Covina.

Authorities say that Perez and former Deputy Steven Switzer, 31, were responsible for the majority of the credit card losses, estimated at more than $75,000. Switzer has not yet been sentenced.

House and the other victims described how they were pulled over and questioned, often about whether they had been drinking. Each was directed to empty his pockets onto the front seat and sit behind the car, on the curb. And each said he did not realize until much later--after the deputies had racked up the illegal charges--that their credit cards were missing.

One victim said the possibility that the deputy could have stolen his credit card did not cross his mind until his high school-age son suggested it.

In sentencing Perez to a year short of the maximum six-year term, Ito noted that the crime involved a betrayal of the public trust and an ongoing pattern of criminal behavior that involved multiple victims. “There was no motivation for this other than plain greed,” the judge said.

Ito also refused to permit Perez to delay his surrender by a week, saying he posed a flight risk. After the hearing, the former deputy’s relatives--including his sister, his wife (with their infant daughter)--crowded around him for a tearful goodby. He was then led away by his former colleagues.

Just before the judge pronounced the sentence, Perez issued a rambling apology in which he said that he wanted many times to “spill the beans” about the scheme, but lacked the courage to do so because of threats from the other defendants.

“I’m ashamed of what I did,” he said. “I disappointed the community. I disappointed society, and I disappointed the Sheriff’s Department. . . . I wasn’t a bad cop, sir. I just made a bad mistake as a cop.”

Perez’s attorney argued that his client had been drawn into the scam by the civilian defendant, 35-year-old Mario Rendon, scheduled to be sentenced Thursday. Lawyer J. Arthur Bernal told the judge that Perez did not commit the thefts on his own, and that while the scam was in operation, Perez “lost touch with reality, didn’t know the difference between reality and illusion.”

But prosecutor Jodi Rafkin described Perez as an initiator of the scam, and termed Bernal’s argument “absolutely ridiculous and simply untrue.”

The third deputy, Brent Mosley, 27, was assigned last month to a 90-day diagnostic stay at the state’s Chino Institute for Men to determine if he is a good candidate for probation.