Controversial Businessman Linked to Rep. Tucker Case : Inquiry: Promoter with checkered past sparked bribery probe, sources say. Compton leader has denied charges.

John Macardican came to Compton with lofty promises. The sleek incinerator he wanted to build would transform garbage to energy, put Compton on the cutting edge of waste technology and create jobs for a city in dire need of an economic boost.

Instead, the San Gabriel Valley businessman prompted a federal probe resulting in the indictment of a congressman and an investigation of Compton officials, according to sources. It was Macardican, the sources said, who turned in Rep. Walter R. Tucker III (D-Compton).

Tucker, the popular young hero of a politically prominent Compton family, allegedly solicited and received $30,000 in bribes and demanded another $250,000 to support the waste-to-energy proposal while serving as the city’s mayor. He has proclaimed his innocence.

Macardican, 56, a private man with a mixed record of business success, was no newcomer to Compton. Some there now wonder why, in light of his checkered financial past, city officials considered doing business with him. Around town he is known somewhat derisively as the man who once wanted to place a revolving restaurant atop an earlier trash facility he promoted.

In 1985, he and about a dozen associates were sued for allegedly bilking the state out of $7.4 million in bonds used to finance a Compton garbage facility that went bankrupt. Macardican had to pay a $130,000 judgment.

There were other lawsuits, including one by a former attorney seeking $250,000 in unpaid legal fees and another by a posh hotel that claimed Macardican failed to pay $12,900 for his daughter’s wedding reception.

“In light of the lawsuits against him, any government institution or body that did a check on him would realize that he was not a reliable person to do business with,” said attorney Richard S. E. Johns, who sued Macardican on behalf of the California Pollution Control Financing Authority for his role in the bond debacle.

Nonetheless, at Tucker’s urging, the Compton City Council granted Macardican an exclusive negotiating agreement in July, 1992, to develop an ambitious facility of the type that experts say had long been proven unworkable.

But there was more than one strong advocate for the waste-to-energy project in Compton. Some now wonder about the sudden appearance--and disappearance--of a man who called himself Stan Bailey, and who curried the favor of local officials while claiming to work for Macardican. There is speculation that Bailey was working undercover for the FBI.

Macardican, who has apparently done well with some of his businesses, was president of Compton Energy Systems Inc. when he approached Compton officials in December, 1989, with the idea of reviving a waste-to-energy project he had first proposed in 1984.

Tucker allegedly solicited the first of seven bribes from Macardican’s company in June, 1991, according to a federal indictment returned in August. Tucker is also accused of failing to report the money on his federal income tax returns.

Federal officials have declined to discuss details of the investigation that led to the indictment. Macardican did not respond to numerous phone calls and visits to his home and business over a three-week period.

Sources familiar with the case said it was the result of a two-year undercover investigation run out of the FBI’s Long Beach office after Macardican complained that Compton officials were soliciting bribes from him.

According to sources, the FBI sent an undercover agent to pose as a representative of Macardican’s company. The agent, accompanied by company officials, held numerous meetings with Tucker and other Compton officials, offering them the bribes they demanded, sources said.

Prosecutors have acquired campaign records of seven current and former elected officials who held office during the period the alleged bribes took place, according to a copy of a federal subpoena obtained by The Times. They are Tucker, City Clerk Charles Davis, Mayor Omar Bradley, Councilwoman Jane D. Robbins and former council members Patricia Moore, Bernice Woods and Maxcy D. Filer.

The council debated Macardican’s project during a contentious meeting July 28, 1992, three days before Tucker allegedly received the final bribe. Community activists complained that the issue had been placed on the agenda without prior public discussion.

The vote was 3-2, with Tucker, Moore and Robbins arguing that the project would bring jobs to the city and help reduce the need for landfills. Tucker, who introduced the proposal, declined to be interviewed. Moore and Robbins said they relied heavily on the advice of city staff, adding that had they known of Macardican’s checkered business history they would have reconsidered.

The only staff document was a five-paragraph statement written by City Manager Howard Caldwell supporting the agreement. Caldwell did not respond to numerous phone calls over a two-week period.

Some experts say the kind of project Macardican promoted had already become a thing of the past because of tougher pollution standards and public opposition to incinerators. “The door pretty much closed on those type facilities (in Southern California) by the mid-’80s,” said Barclay Hudson, a consultant who teaches a UCLA extension course on solid waste management.

In the end, however, the vote mattered little.

On Aug. 11--the day that Tucker was indicted--the man who sources say turned in the congressman formally withdrew his application.

In a hand-delivered letter to Compton’s planning department, Macardican offered no explanation. He simply asked to end “all related proceedings, effective immediately.”

Macardican is described by former associates and others as smart, self-confident and often brash. Some say his aggressive style has sometimes gotten him in trouble. He has operated several waste-related enterprises that are no longer in business.

Others say he tries to protect himself by hiding his assets. “Nothing is in his name,” attorney Johns said.

Property records show that his sprawling ranch-style estate in an exclusive Arcadia neighborhood is listed in his mother’s name, and another expensive house in Arcadia is owned by his wife, Joyce. A third home, a seaside condo in a gated Laguna Beach neighborhood, is owned by one of his businesses.

His principal business, Commercial Waste Paper Co. in South El Monte, was incorporated in 1952. Associates say that Macardican took over the company from his father and that he became interested in waste-to-energy conversion in the early 1980s after reading about it in a magazine.

Although his dealings in Compton date back to July, 1979, when he and nine other businessmen formed Solid Waste Transporters Inc., few people in town are able, or willing, to recall much about him.

In 1980, Macardican and the others received $7.4 million in low-interest bonds from the state Pollution Control Financing Authority to buy and operate a facility where garbage was dumped and separated for recycling.

Under the lending agreement, Macardican and his partners were to pay back the loan with revenue earned from charging trash haulers to leave their refuse at the site.

In March, 1984, the corporation filed for bankruptcy and defaulted on the loan--the only default on publicly held bonds in the 21-year history of the authority. In the 1985 federal lawsuit, attorneys alleged that Macardican and his partners never intended to pay back the loan and conspired from the beginning to pocket the money.

“They saw the state as a trough that they could feed from,” said Johns, who claims that Macardican and the others made off with $30,000 to $50,000 apiece. “They sat around in meetings and repeatedly agreed that they were not going to honor those guarantees.”

But one of Macardican’s former attorneys called him a “white knight” who tried to keep the corporation afloat against overwhelming odds. The business was the victim of overly optimistic economic projections, said Kevin Stapleton, who represented Macardican in an unrelated case in 1991.

The state has collected about $6.6 million from the defendants and expects to receive the balance this month.

At the time Solid Waste Transporters was going under in 1984, Macardican faced a public outcry in Compton against his first waste-to-energy incinerator proposal.

Opponents were upset that the incinerator was to be built next to a residential neighborhood. But, a decade later, it is the restaurant proposal that they remember most.

“At first we laughed so hard the walls almost shook,” recalled Compton resident William Coleman, 69, who helped lead the fight against the proposal. “Then, as the idea sank in, people were angry.”

Another opponent, ex-council member Filer, helped vote down that project in 1984 when he was a member of the City Council. So he was surprised when Macardican showed up at his law office in September, 1991, asking him to be his lawyer in five civil cases.

“I was on cloud nine,” recalled Filer, who at the time had only recently passed the bar. “I could see the money coming in.”

But he was wrong.

After persuading the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel in Pasadena to settle for $2,000 of the $12,900 it had sought, and saving Macardican another $40,000 by settling a lease dispute, Filer said Macardican still owes him $5,000 in legal fees.

Filer suspects that Macardican approached him to win favor with his son, who was then a member of the Compton school board. Macardican was interested in property owned by the school district as a possible site for his incinerator.

The alleged debt owed Filer is small change compared to that claimed by another former Macardican attorney, Thomas L. Wilson. He filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court demanding $250,000 in unpaid legal fees. The case is to be heard in November.

Although much controversy remains about Macardican in Compton, even more intrigue surrounds the man who called himself Bailey.

Those familiar with Bailey mention him in hushed tones and insist on anonymity. Some are convinced that the tall, well-dressed man who suddenly appeared in the spring of 1991 claiming to represent Macardican was really a federal agent.

Even among those ambivalent about Tucker’s innocence, there is suspicion that Bailey was part of a sting operation aimed at black officials--something that federal prosecutors have vehemently denied.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven G. Madyson declined to discuss Bailey, saying he could neither confirm nor deny the identity of anyone presumably associated with the case.

Bailey presented himself as a consultant from Las Vegas who had worked with Macardican previously and who had been asked by Macardican to help win support for the Compton trash facility.

“He appeared out of nowhere,” said one former Compton official. “None of us had ever heard of him.”

Sources say he diligently cultivated good relations with officials, dropping off red roses and candy at City Hall, attending community dinners and donating turkeys and canned hams to a city-sponsored program for needy families.

In March, 1991, sources say, a large number of Compton movers and shakers attended a gala reception at what was believed to be Bailey’s spacious oceanfront penthouse in Long Beach. According to some who were there, the guest list included Macardican, then-Councilwoman Moore, City Clerk Davis and then-council candidate Bradley.

Jean Sanders, the widow of former Compton city treasurer Wesley Sanders, recalls the lavish party for a special reason.

Having attended with her husband and Bradley, Sanders said she viewed Bailey with suspicion from the moment he approached her husband at the party “pretending to be a long-lost cousin.”

“We had never heard of him and yet he was rattling off names of relatives we hadn’t seen in years,” recalled Sanders, who was running for the City Council at the time.

As they were about to leave, she said, Bailey reached into his coat pocket and pulled out two sealed envelopes. He gave one to her and another to Bradley.

Once inside the car, she said, she opened her envelope and found $200 in cash. Bradley then opened his envelope and found $100.

“ ‘Wait a minute! You can’t take that. You don’t even know who this guy is,’ ” she recalled her husband saying.

Sanders said they circled the block, and while she and Bradley stayed in the car, her husband went back inside and returned the money, asking for bank checks that could be properly reported on campaign forms. State law prohibits individual cash contributions of more than $99.

Although Bradley did not refute Sanders’ account, he declined to comment.

“He (Bailey) made up some excuse about not having his checkbook or something,” Sanders said. “We had nothing more to do with him after that. In fact, my husband called (soon-to-be elected Mayor) Walter (Tucker III) to warn him to stay clear of the guy.”

Bailey was active in community affairs until the summer of 1993. “Then,” said one source, “he just sort of disappeared.”

Times correspondent Emily Adams contributed to this story.