Former Deputy Denies He Planned to Buy Cocaine

A former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy testified Friday that he never planned to buy cocaine with $151,000 found in the trunk of his rented car but thought the cash was to be used for “money laundering.”

In Rickey Ross’ first comments about the case since he was arrested in 1992, he testified that he was set up by a government informant, who had promised financial assistance and lucrative business opportunities if Ross transported the cash for him.

The prosecution contends that Ross, who was in the rented Cadillac with former Dodger Derrel Thomas, planned to use the cash in the trunk to purchase 22 pounds of cocaine. They were arrested April 24, 1992, in a McDonald’s parking lot during a federal Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation.

Thomas has testified against Ross during the trial in exchange for a prison sentence of no more than three years. Ross faces up to 11 years in prison.

Ross, an 18-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department, was arrested in 1989 for allegedly killing three prostitutes, although the charges were dropped. After he was released, the Sheriff’s Department sent him a termination letter but he was later allowed to resign.

Ross testified Friday that after he left the department, he had trouble finding steady work. He said that before his second arrest, he was broke and he was facing foreclosure on his Rialto house.

At that time he was trying to sell to movie production companies the rights to his story of being wrongly accused and spending 82 days in a top-security unit of the County Jail.

While he was negotiating with several production companies, he testified, he ran into an acquaintance at a bar whom he had met years earlier. The man was “a real wheeler-dealer,” Ross testified. He said he thought the man was in the import-export business and had connections with movie production companies.

It turned out that the man was an informant for the DEA, a convicted drug dealer who was trying to set up sting operations in exchange for a reduced prison sentence.

Ross, 45, testified that the informant promised to lend him $12,000 and help him set up a movie and book deal worth up to $500,000 if he would transport a shipment of cash.

The former deputy testified that he headed out to an Upland restaurant and met an associate of the informant who tossed a gym bag full of money into the trunk of the rented car. Ross had rented the car a few days earlier, he said, because his car was not running.

“I needed the loan from him to save my house from foreclosure. . . . He told me he could get me one hell of a deal with movies and books,” Ross said in court. “He pressured me to pick up the money and drop it off to him. I thought he might be involved in money laundering, not drugs.”

Thomas had testified earlier that the informant also promised to set him up with movie executives to further his fledgling acting career if he would help set up the cocaine deal.

The prosecution contends that Ross ended up in the parking lot of the McDonald’s, along with Thomas and the informant, with the intention of purchasing the 22 pounds of cocaine.

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Deputy Dist. Atty. Jane Winston has said that Ross, who was with several undercover DEA agents, opened the trunk, opened the gym bag and displayed the stacks of bills. The men eventually returned to the agents’ van, Winston said, where Ross was shown 10 kilograms of cocaine in a plastic bag. When he removed a small folding knife from his back pocket to test the cocaine, she said, he was arrested.

But Ross testified that he did not know what was in the plastic bag. After one agent attempted to place the bag in his hand, he said, he only used the knife “to peek under the flap . . . because curiosity got the best of me.” A DEA agent, Ross said, “kept trying to get me in the van. He kept saying: ‘I want to show you something.’

“I looked under the flap and said: ‘I don’t want this. I didn’t come here for this. . . . You guys got it all wrong.’ I turned away and tried to walk away from the vehicle.”

Winston said she intends to focus on Ross’ scenario during her cross-examination. “It seems pretty clear” she said in an interview, “that he had every intention of sampling the drug and engaging in a narcotics buy.”

Ross testified that a few hours after he was arrested, a detective from the San Fernando Police Department, who was working with the DEA on the sting operation, talked to him about a lawsuit he had filed against the Los Angeles Police Department in 1989. After the murder charges were dropped, Ross filed the suit, which is pending, alleging that the LAPD and former Chief Daryl F. Gates violated his civil rights.

Ross testified that the San Fernando detective told him that if he dropped the suit, “they would drop this case against me.”

Winston later called the story “preposterous.”