8 Indicted, Including 4 Sheriff’s Employees

Eight people--including four Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department employees--have been indicted on a variety of felony charges stemming from a credit card scam allegedly involving workers at the Twin Towers jail, sources familiar with the case said Thursday.

The defendants received letters this week, informing them of the charges and ordering them to surrender to the Sheriff’s Department before facing arraignment next week, law enforcement sources said.

According to investigators, the scam involved a collaboration of inmates and Sheriff’s Department employees, who conspired to use stolen credit cards to get cash from automated teller machines. The felony charges facing the eight include possession of stolen property, grand theft, conspiracy to commit grand theft and grand theft with stolen credit cards, sources said.

The credit card scheme was revealed after an undercover sting operation by the Sheriff’s Department. After the revelations, 11 employees--including four deputies--were relieved of duty last May. Since then, most have been assigned to their homes, where they remain on the payroll.

The district attorney’s office gave the case to the Los Angeles County Grand Jury several months ago. According to officials close to the case, the grand jury handed up the indictments this week.

Those proceedings are confidential until the time of arraignment, when the indictments will be unsealed. No one in the district attorney’s office or the Sheriff’s Department would publicly discuss the indictments Thursday.

With indictments, prosecutors can proceed directly to arraignment--the formal presentation of charges against those accused--without presenting witnesses at a preliminary hearing.

Other Sheriff’s Department employees, who include civilian jail workers known as custody assistants, still are under investigation and may face charges.

Several attorneys and others involved said they have been skeptical of the Sheriff’s Department investigation since it was revealed in May at a splashy news conference by Sheriff Lee Baca. At the time, they questioned the sheriff’s decision to disclose details about the investigation, mostly because charges did not appear to be forthcoming.

Most employees have been at home with pay since last spring and, up until this week, haven’t heard anything about possible charges.

The alleged ringleader, David Osorio, was arrested last fall and is expected to be arraigned today on four felony charges stemming from another, larger credit card scheme that authorities said he operated separately from the one involving sheriff’s employees.

Osorio, a sheriff’s deputy who worked at the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, is alleged to have used a fraudulent credit card to make purchases at a Bellflower custom wheel store. Osorio, through his lawyer, has denied any wrongdoing.

The investigation--dubbed “Operation Easy Money,” conducted over seven months and culminating last May with search warrants at employees’ homes--involved the largest number of sheriff’s workers accused of crimes since the department’s narcotics unit scandal in the late 1980s. At that time, more than two dozen deputies were accused of stealing and laundering cash, among other crimes.

The deputies relieved of duty, aside from Osorio, are Richard English, Jessie Zuniga and Monica Planty. The custody assistants are Christopher Coleman, Josephine Phillips, Michael Habib, Tirrell Thomas, Meko Goodley, Timothy Miller and Hilary Ayers. All of the employees, except Osorio, are assigned to the Twin Towers jail.

In their undercover operation, sheriff’s investigators set up dummy credit card accounts. Using surveillance equipment, the department videotaped the employees receiving what they allegedly believed were stolen credit cards.

Then, according to the Sheriff’s Department, investigators watched those employees withdraw cash from bank machines. Sheriff’s officials have said that only Phillips did not participate in the credit card scheme; rather, they believe she assisted by running a license plate check on sheriff’s computers, a potential misdemeanor, not a felony.