Former Officer Indicted in Commodities Scam

A former San Diego police officer was among those indicted on charges of laundering $4.5 million in the commodities market, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Stephen W. Bishel was charged in the indictment with 112 counts of mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to transport funds in interstate and foreign commerce and engaging in a pattern of racketeering. The indictment was announced Monday.

Charged with him were Andrew J. Vento, Kenneth Wayne Richdale and Jonathan Anthony Todhunter, also known as Johnny Cacciatore. Todhunter, a resident of Great Britain, was being sought by British authorities.

FBI agent Darwin Wisdom said they embezzled and laundered millions of dollars through a series of fabricated commodity transactions involving a brokerage firm in Great Britain.

Bishel had been sentenced in September, 1980, to 18 months in jail and five years’ probation for stealing another police officer’s payroll check and cashing it with a forged signature, and later robbing an El Cajon jewelry store.

After he was released, he was jailed a second time for stealing a Porsche by force, according to the San Diego Police Department.

After Bishel’s first jail term, he traded securities through La Jolla’s J. David & Co., which collapsed in scandal in the mid-1980s.

The indictment charges that as Bishel laundered the money through European accounts, he purchased 12 luxury automobiles worth more than $800,000, gold coins worth more than $600,000, his home in the Coronado Cays area of San Diego and a $600,000 yacht.