Agent Denies Stealing 650 Pounds of Cocaine

A state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement agent Tuesday denied stealing 650 pounds of cocaine from an evidence locker and then selling off the cache through a former girlfriend.

Taking the stand in his own defense, Richard Wayne Parker sought to explain much of the circumstantial evidence that federal prosecutors contend points to his guilt.

Under questioning by his defense lawyer, Parker acknowledged hiding nearly $600,000 in cash at his San Juan Capistrano home and garage and inside his truck.

He said most of the money belonged to ex-girlfriend Monica L. Pitto, 40, who worked as an investment advisor in Citicorp’s international banking department.

Parker said Pitto had several wealthy Middle Eastern clients who entrusted her with large sums of cash to hold and have available on short notice.

He testified that she gave him the money to hold because she feared for her safety.

Pitto, who was arrested with Parker on July 2, 1998, after she was spotted giving him an envelope containing $47,000 in cash, has pleaded guilty in the case and recently testified against him.

Parker, 44, told jurors in his Los Angeles federal court trial Tuesday that he and Pitto remained friends after a love affair in the late 1980s. In 1993, he said, she became concerned that she was being followed and later asked him to hold about $25,000 for her while she went out of town for the weekend. Pitto paid him $500 for baby-sitting the cash, he said.

Gradually the frequency and the amount of money that Pitto left with him for safekeeping increased, he said. He said she insisted on paying him for his services and for providing security to her when she went to late night dinner meetings with her clients.

“Monica assured me it wasn’t anything illegal,” he testified. He said she told him she could not tell him much more about her clients “for reasons of confidentiality.”

Anticipating the prosecution’s cross-examination, defense lawyer Richard A. Hamar elicited acknowledgments from Parker that he never reported his income from Pitto to the Internal Revenue Service and never obtained permission from his superiors to work for Pitto.

Parker also sought to rebut an FBI agent’s testimony that a calendar seized from Parker at the time of his arrest contained notations indicating various drug transactions.

He said some numbers represented dosages of the body building supplement called creatine monohydrate.

Pitto, who reached a plea bargain with prosecutors, testified earlier that she used cocaine in the late 1980s when she and Parker were lovers, and that in 1992 he asked her to help him sell a kilogram of cocaine given to him as a kickback.

She said she sold it for $15,000 to a narcotics dealer friend and that she and Parker split the proceeds, marking the start of their drug trafficking operation.

She said Parker provided her with cocaine until 1993 when her regular buyer was arrested on narcotics charges. She said they resumed trafficking when the buyer got out of prison in 1996.

A year later, the evidence locker at the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement’s office in Riverside was cleaned out over the Fourth of July weekend. Riverside police detectives concluded it was an “inside job.”

It was not clear whether Parker, who had worked there since 1995, was considered a suspect at that time. That changed, though, in June 1998, when Pitto’s longtime cocaine buyer, Gerhard Hensel, was arrested in Lomita in an FBI sting. He confessed and agreed to set up another buy with Pitto. After the sale, FBI agents trailed her to the roof of a parking structure in Pasadena where they watched her surrender a brown envelope to a man in a green pickup truck. The man was Parker.

Parker and Pitto were arrested after they drove out of the parking garage. Inside Parker’s truck, agents found an envelope containing $47,000, a pouch containing $17,000 and what they said were ledgers showing narcotics transactions.

Also arrested at their residences were two Pitto associates, Christine L. Whitney, 27, of Redondo Beach and Pamela Sue Gray, 44, of Hermosa Beach. They are being tried with Parker on charges of possession and conspiracy to sell cocaine.