Charges Against 4 Arrested in Sweep Dropped : Law enforcement: Dismissal of the drug-selling counts brings to six the number of misidentifications discovered following Operation Roundup. The D.A.’s office continues to review other indictments.

Orange County prosecutors dismissed charges Wednesday against four men who were wrongly identified as selling drugs to an undercover informant during Operation Roundup, bringing the number of botched identifications in the high-profile sweep to six.

“The people that made the sale were not the people that had been arrested,” said Supervising Deputy Dist. Atty. Mel Jensen.

Santa Ana police worked with the district attorney’s office Wednesday to review videotapes of drug sales and confirmed the latest mistaken identities, Jensen said.

“It’s not an enjoyable task to see a case where somebody had been wrongly arrested,” Jensen said. “Frankly, I’m shocked that it occurred in any case, but we’re going to go through all the cases systematically as we’ve begun doing. Hopefully we won’t find any more.”

The dismissals dealt more blows to the undercover operation, which resulted in 130 grand jury indictments and prompted Gov. Pete Wilson to fly in for a Sept. 7 press conference. Prosecutors said last week that they will review all cases in the gang and drug sweep because of the mistaken identities.

Charges were dismissed Wednesday against Luis Fernando Lopez, Jose Aguilar, Celso Martinez and Jesus Zambrano.

Lopez, 20, of Santa Ana, was released from jail last week after providing evidence that he was jailed in Texas on the dates that he was charged with selling drugs in Santa Ana. Aguilar, 24, of Santa Ana, was also released last week as prosecutors reviewed inconsistencies in the case.

Tuesday, Deputy Public Defender Sharon Petrosino filed a motion to dismiss charges against Celso Martinez, 33, of Santa Ana, saying too much time had elapsed between the date of the crime and her client’s arrest and that records key to his defense were no longer available.

Jensen said Wednesday the charges were dropped after a review of videotapes showed that Martinez had been wrongly identified.

Further information on Zambrano’s case was not available late Wednesday.

Last week prosecutors dropped charges against Gustavo Arrollo Martinez, 26, who was in state prison at the time he was accused of selling drugs in Santa Ana. Jensen said that charges were also dismissed, about two weeks ago, against Arturo Mendoza, who was indicted as part of Operation Roundup and was also misidentified.

Jensen would not comment on how the misidentifications were made, but police have said they identified the suspects with help from informant Henry Gomez after he made the drug buys.

Gomez’s credibility has come under fire because of allegations that he pilfered city money during drug buys. Gomez was first caught stealing during drug buys on March 23, according to documents related to the operation. That information was brought to the attention of the district attorney’s office more than two months later, and the “buy phase” of the operation was brought to a close.

Santa Ana Police Lt. William Tegeler said problems with Gomez were part of the decision to end the drug buys, but that there were other issues involved.

The FBI, Santa Ana police and the district attorney’s office worked the operation together. Tegeler said the agencies were concerned that grand jury indictments might take a long time to secure and that cases might become too numerous or get stale if too much time elapsed. The agencies also wanted the arrests made before the beginning of the school year, he said.