Fresno Corruption Probe Snares Lobbyist : Ethics: He pleads guilty to helping extort a bribe from a developer. Several officeholders are under suspicion, U.S. attorney says.

A sweeping federal investigation of municipal corruption has snared its first big target, a lobbyist long suspected of being a bagman for developers and politicians.

Jeffrey T. Roberts, 43, a consultant on building projects in Fresno County, pleaded guilty last week to helping a city councilman extort a $10,000 campaign contribution from a developer.

In exchange for a reduced prison sentence, Roberts has agreed to testify against the city councilman and others he implicated in a written confession filed with the U.S. District Court here.

Because Roberts has his fingerprints on virtually every major zoning change and general plan amendment in Fresno and adjacent Clovis in recent years, his confession and cooperation is a big victory for FBI and IRS investigators.

And it has made a lot of people in the central San Joaquin Valley--politicians and developers alike--very nervous.

“Jeff Roberts represented the vast majority of projects in Fresno and Clovis,” said Tom Bohigian, a former Fresno city councilman. “I suspect there are quite a few politicians and developers around here who aren’t sleeping so well at night.”

The wide-ranging probe is being conducted by political corruption experts from the Sacramento offices of the FBI and IRS. It began 16 months ago when a local developer from a prominent Fresno family, William Tatham Jr., turned over secret recordings of meetings between himself, Roberts and Clovis City Councilman Leif C. Sorensen.

Sorensen demanded $10,000 from Tatham in January, 1994, before he would vote to approve Tatham’s zoning request, according to Roberts’ confession. Tatham had hired Roberts as a consultant to push through his 152-house project in Clovis.

“If Tatham paid the $10,000, Sorensen would see to it that his pre-zone approval request would be approved so fast, it would ‘make his head swim,’ ” Roberts wrote in the court statement.

On March 17, 1994, Roberts asked Sorensen in what form he wanted the payment, and the councilman allegedly responded, “I think in the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, you just do it in green.”

Roberts has admitted to laundering a $2,500 check from Tatham to Sorensen. Authorities said a second payment of $5,000 was returned when Roberts and Sorensen suspected--quite correctly--that Tatham was recording their meetings.

By that time, it was too late.

Tatham had handed over the recordings to Jim Wedick, the FBI agent who had just completed the most ambitious political corruption probe in California history--the so-called Shrimp Scam sting that netted 14 public officials, including state Sens. Joseph B. Montoya, Alan Robbins and Paul Carpenter.

Wedick and his partner, IRS Special Agent Howard Moline, traveled to Fresno and soon determined that an in-depth investigation was needed to root out an entrenched--and barely concealed--system of buying and selling land use votes.

U.S. Atty. Charles Stevens of Sacramento appeared in Fresno last week to confirm that the investigation was focusing on several elected officials in Fresno and Clovis, along with a number of developers and “middle men” such as Roberts.

Stevens has convened a federal grand jury in Sacramento and subpoenaed dozens of people to testify. Indictments are expected as early as this month. “Several developers have stepped up and cooperated,” Stevens said. “They’ve bellied up to the bar and told us what they know.”

At the center of many of the deals was Roberts, the grandson of John E. Roberts, who helped shape much of post-World War II Los Angeles as the head of city planning.

The younger Roberts grew up in Southern California and studied urban planning at Cal State Fresno. In 1980, after being laid off as a Fresno County planner, he began lobbying elected officials on behalf of builders and developers.

Over the years, his sway surpassed that of all others in winning zoning changes and general plan amendments for his wealthy clients. He dressed in expensive clothes and drove around town in a 1961 Corvette with a license plate that read REZONED.

Neighborhood groups opposed to suburban sprawl complained of city councils and boards of supervisors being “bought off” by developers, with Roberts as their conduit.

They told stories of back-room meetings between politicians and developers at country clubs and cash payments hidden in the folds of building plans. But these were little more than rumors until last week, when Roberts entered his guilty plea to one count of aiding and abetting extortion and one count of tax evasion.

In exchange for his cooperation, his potential prison term of 23 years could be reduced to 24 months. On the strength of Roberts’ testimony, Sorensen could be indicted as early as this month, according to Stevens.

Roberts’ confession also implicates developers Pat Fortune and Ken Crabtree in an attempt to obstruct justice by hatching a plan with Sorensen to cover up the $10,000 Tatham extortion.

Fortune, Crabtree and Sorensen have maintained their innocence.

“A false witness shall not be unpunished,” Councilman Sorensen said last week, quoting Proverbs. “And he that speaketh lies shall not escape.”