Retrial Begins for Former Drug Agent

Federal prosecutors Thursday began their second effort to convict veteran state narcotics agent Richard Wayne Parker of stealing 650 pounds of cocaine from an evidence locker and selling it piecemeal through a former girlfriend.

After an eight-week trial last spring, a Los Angeles jury acquitted Parker on two counts of possessing narcotics for sale and one count of money laundering.

The jury deadlocked 10-1 for acquittal on four other charges, including possessing narcotics and conspiracy. A judge declared a mistrial after the sole holdout refused to concede.

Jurors convicted Parker--who has been held without bail since his arrest in July 1998--on a single felony count of filing a false tax return in 1997.

In the courtroom Thursday, prosecutors again argued that Parker stole the huge stash of cocaine during a faked burglary over the July 4, 1997, weekend at the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement office in Riverside, where he worked and had access to the evidence locker.

Parker was not arrested until a year later, when he was caught up in an unrelated drug sting. FBI agents arrested him in a parking garage, where he had received $47,000 in cash from his former girlfriend, Monica L. Pitto, 40, of Hermosa Beach. The agents had tailed Pitto after witnessing her sell a kilogram of cocaine to a drug dealer friend.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Lizabeth Rhodes argued Thursday that Parker supplied stolen cocaine to Pitto, who sold it and returned the proceeds to Parker.

She also said that after Parker’s arrest, agents found an additional $550,000 in cash in his San Juan Capistrano home, garage and vehicles.

Defense attorney Richard A. Hamar said Parker was not Pitto’s drug supplier, and that Pitto fooled Parker into believing the money she gave him was legitimate.

He said Parker had often seen Pitto, a former private banker, with large amounts of cash, which she held for wealthy clients from the Middle East. Hamar maintained that Pitto only asked Parker to safeguard the money for her.

However, Rhodes told jurors that Pitto said she and Parker sold cocaine together through a number of dealers, and that the money was drug proceeds.

Hamar countered that Pitto’s testimony had been given in exchange for a lighter sentence on her conviction on conspiracy charges.

“She changed her cover story to blame Parker,” he said. “She is very sensitive to the exclusive power of the government to recommend a lenient sentence.”