Pubdate: Fri, 16 Jan 2009
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2009 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Website: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Paul Pringle
Bookmark: Mexico Under Siege (Series) http://mapinc.org/find?255

Mexico Under Siege

ALLEGED CHARACTER-LETTER FORGERY INVESTIGATED

Authorities Say Prosecutors Are Looking into Allegations That Someone 
Forged the Letter in the Name of an El Monte Police Officer for a 
Defendant Seeking Lower Bail in a High-Profile Drug-Money Case.

Prosecutors are investigating allegations that someone forged a 
character-reference letter in the name of an El Monte police officer 
for a defendant who was seeking lower bail in a high-profile 
drug-money case, authorities said Thursday.

Pedro Yanez, a narcotics detective with the El Monte Police 
Department, told The Times that he did not write the Aug. 5 letter, 
which bore a photocopy of his business card. He said he knew little 
about the defendant, Covina resident Julissa Lopez, who is awaiting 
trial along with her brother and two Mexican federal police officers. 
They are scheduled to appear in court today.

Yanez said he has known the brother, Hector Lopez, for several years 
because they had played together on an adult baseball team, but that 
he had not seen him in the months before the July arrests.

The detective and El Monte Police Chief Tom Armstrong said the 
signature on the letter is strikingly different from the ones in 
Yanez's personnel file. "They're not even close," Armstrong said. "He 
did not write the letter. . . . He's a good guy."

The signature also does not match the one on Yanez's voter 
registration records.

Mark Werksman, Julissa Lopez's attorney, said he submitted the letter 
to Los Angeles County Superior Court after receiving it and others 
from the defendant's family. He said the family could not recall who 
gave him the document.

Werksman had been asking the court to reduce Lopez's bail, which 
originally was $2 million.

She was released last week on $400,000 bail, Werksman said.

"I don't have reason to believe the letter was fabricated," he said. 
"Why would any family member be so audacious as to fabricate a letter 
from a law enforcement officer? Preposterous."

The Lopezes and the two Mexican federal agents are charged with 
possessing more than $600,000 in connection with a drug transaction. 
They have pleaded not guilty. If convicted, they face up to four 
years in prison.

They were arrested in a raid at the Covina home of the Lopezes' 
parents, who have not been implicated in the case.

After The Times inquired about the letter, Jane Robison, a 
spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, 
said that the agency had asked case investigators to launch a forgery probe.

"If the allegations are true, we would ask for revocation of bail," 
Robison said.

A court spokeswoman said Judge William Ryan, who is presiding over 
the case, had "no recollection" of the letter and that it had nothing 
to do with the decision to reduce Lopez's bail.

Yanez said he might have given his business card to the Lopez family 
during the years he played baseball with Hector Lopez.

Addressed "to whom it may concern," the letter does not mention the 
charges in the case or the bail, but praises Julissa Lopez's work at 
her father's tire business. "[S]he has taken very well care of my 
cars," it says. ". . . She can be seen at a local kids baseball game, 
softball game, soccer game, and in the library with her kids all in one week."

Lopez, 36, is the common-law wife of defendant Carlos Cedano 
Filippini, 35, who was a Mexican federal police commander when he was 
taken into custody.

Also charged is Victor Juarez, 36, identified as an investigator for 
Cedano at the Mexicali office of Mexico's Federal Investigative 
Agency, that nation's equivalent of the FBI.

Cedano is believed to have been the target of a shooting in Mexicali 
last summer in which gunmen killed two of his aides. Mexican media 
reported that Cedano abandoned his job after the shooting.

Yanez, whose department was not involved in the Covina investigation, 
said he had no knowledge that Hector Lopez, 33, might have been the 
target of a drug probe. He said he had only a vague memory of ever 
meeting Julissa.

An attorney for Hector Lopez could not be reached for comment.

A stakeout team of narcotics investigators that stormed the house on 
North Monte Verde Drive seized a suitcase full of cash, a 
money-counting machine, other bundles of currency, heat-sealable 
packets for the bills, and notations believed to be records of 
payments and debts for narcotics, authorities say. Defense attorneys 
have said the lists were the innocent jottings of family activities.

No drugs were found, but a police dog trained to sniff out narcotics 
residue showed a positive response to the suitcase and to other items 
in the bedroom, investigators say.

The defense has filed a writ with the state appeals court asking that 
the case be thrown out because investigators have not revealed what 
led them to the house. 
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