L.A. Jailhouse Informant Seized on Perjury Charge : Scandal: He had gained leniency by claiming that fellow inmates had confessed murders to him.

A career criminal who repeatedly won leniency for himself by testifying that people confessed murders to him has been indicted for perjury in the latest chapter in Los Angeles County’s jailhouse informant scandal.

Sidney Storch, a 46-year-old check forger who has been in and out of jail most of his adult life, was arrested Monday night at the Salvation Army veterans’ home in New York City, where he moved after a scandal about informants faking confessions broke in Los Angeles.

Storch’s indictment--the scandal’s first--was returned secretly last April in a case brought by the California attorney general’s office. A prosecutor said the delay in his arrest was because prosecutors had been told he was dead.

In what is apparently a continuing investigation, the attorney general’s office has subpoenaed another jailhouse informant, Leslie Vernon White, to testify before the grand jury later this month.

After learning of Storch’s indictment, White said he expects to be charged with perjury as well. “However, both myself and my attorney look forward to standing at the defense table in court next to my co-conspirators, who should be several members of the district attorney’s and sheriff’s office,” White said.

White set off the scandal in late 1988 when he demonstrated for sheriff’s officials the ease with which he could fabricate a convincing confession in a murder case. He used a jail telephone and posed as a law enforcement officer to get inside information on the case of a murder suspect he had never met. Later, White told The Times that he had used this and other techniques to commit perjury 12 times.

Jailhouse informants testified in 150 to 250 cases in Los Angeles County during the 1980s.

In a yearlong investigation into misuse of jailhouse informants that ended in 1990, the Los Angeles County grand jury made strong criticisms of the district attorney’s and sheriff’s offices for ethical failings, but handed up no indictments.

However, the grand jury’s special counsel, Douglas Dalton, said he had referred “several matters that suggest provable criminal cases to the district attorney for consideration.”

Declaring that it had a conflict of interest, the district attorney’s office passed the matters on to the attorney general’s office.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Tricia Ann Bigelow, who is heading the investigation, cited secrecy requirements Wednesday in declining to say who--if anyone--might be indicted next.

She acknowledged only that Storch had been charged with one count of perjury but she would not say what Storch was accused of lying about, nor in which case.

An extradition hearing was set for Friday.

Storch is a longtime heroin addict who has told others recently that he has tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS.

In Los Angeles, Storch testified as a prosecution witness in eight cases in the 1980s, according to State Public Defender Verna Wefald. She has investigated Storch while preparing appeals on behalf of two clients against whom he testified.

One of those clients is Bobby Joe Maxwell, the convicted Skid Row Slasher, who was charged with stabbing 10 people to death in late 1978 and early 1979, but was convicted of only two of the murders.

In a pending writ of habeas corpus petition, Wefald has contended that Maxwell’s rights were violated by prosecutors who used perjured testimony of four jailhouse informants, including Storch.

The most important evidence against Maxwell, who is serving a term of life without possibility of parole, was his palm print, found on a bench at the City Hall Mall across the street from police headquarters. A victim of the Skid Row stabbings was found on the same bench on Thanksgiving morning, 1978. But the prosecution couldn’t date Maxwell’s palm print and thus could not conclusively establish that it was put there during the murder.

Storch solved that problem. He testified that he was in a cell with Maxwell when Maxwell saw a newspaper article about stabbings. The article mentioned the palm print. Storch said Maxwell became upset and said he had made a mistake by not wearing gloves on Thanksgiving Day.

In return for his testimony, Storch, who was facing five felony cases involving $44,000 in forgeries, wound up serving less than eight months in jail.

But Storch told Wefald and an investigator who traced him to the Salvation Army shelter last September that he fabricated Maxwell’s confession. The attorney general’s office learned of Storch’s whereabouts from court papers filed on Maxwell’s behalf.

In another murder case, Storch provided the key testimony against Sheldon Sanders, who Storch said confessed his role in a gang killing when the two met on a bus taking them from jail to court.

Storch told jurors in that case that he expected no reward for his testimony. But as soon as his testimony was over, he presented the prosecutor with the draft of a letter he wanted sent to state prison authorities asking for his immediate release. He also asked for cash.

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Scott Carbaugh, mailed such a letter to state authorities the day after jurors convicted Sanders.

Carbaugh, who described the incident in an interoffice memorandum, noted in his letter that Storch had provided “very important” testimony. He could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

In a secretly recorded tape of Storch made in 1987 and later obtained by The Times, Storch explained to another inmate how easy it is to fake confessions in murder cases.

“Go for the jugular,” Storch advised. “You’re going to have to be b---s----ing a little bit, but you might as well get used to that situation.”