Rizzo wasn’t Bell ‘mastermind,’ assistant was, attorney says

Former Bell City Administrator Robert Rizzo is not the brains behind the widespread corruption in the small Los Angeles County city and stands ready to testify against his former second-in-command as the “mastermind” of the wrongdoing, an attorney for the former city leader said.

Defense attorney James Spertus said Rizzo has agreed to testify against Angela Spaccia in a trial that “will hopefully establish that Ms. Spaccia was the mastermind behind all the greed that led to the charges.”

The lawyer said that Spaccia, who was the assistant city administrator, was Rizzo’s bookkeeper and was the one who came up with the “conspiracy to commit tax fraud” and increase salaries and benefits for the town’s top administrator. At the time of his firing, Rizzo was earning about $800,000 and stood to make as much as $1.5 million in one of Los Angeles County’s poorest cities.

FULL COVERAGE: Corruption in Bell

Spaccia’s attorney reacted sharply to the suggestion that his client had orchestrated the corruption in Bell.

“I was shocked,” Harlan Braun said. “It’s amazing.”

Braun, who is preparing for Spaccia’s trial, denied his client was the mastermind of the corruption scheme and said that Rizzo at one point offered her sympathy that she had even been charged: “I don’t know why you’re here.”

Timeline: Bell corruption ‘on steroids’

Braun said that Rizzo told his client: “If there was a conspiracy, it was between me and Lourdes Garcia,” Bell’s then-finance officer.

In a trial in which former Bell city council members were accused of illegally paying themselves salaries for work they did not do, Garcia testified that she helped cover up the massive paychecks of ranking city leaders. She was given limited immunity for her testimony.

Spertus said Rizzo’s plea Thursday is the first step toward resolving three ongoing or potential cases against his client -- the corruption case brought by the Los Angeles County district attorney, which culminated in Rizzo’s plea; a potential federal case charging conspiracy to commit tax fraud; and a lawsuit by the state attorney general.

Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey said in a statement that Rizzo had agreed to serve 10 to 12 years in state prison, which she described as the largest sentence ever in a L.A. County public-corruption case.

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jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com