Pubdate: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 Source: Fresno Bee, The (CA) Copyright: 1999 The Fresno Bee Contact: Feedback: http://www.fresnobee.com/man/opinion/letters.html Website: http://www.fresnobee.com/ Forum: http://www.fresnobee.com/man/projects/webforums/opinion.html Author: Jerry Bier, The Fresno Bee OFFICERS' ALLEGED DRUG HEIST DETAILED Michael Wilcox and George Ruelas were classmates in the California Highway Patrol Academy and partners on the road as patrol officers. They also were partners in crime, federal authorities said. A 42-page affidavit filed in federal court in Fresno details how the two men, together with a Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement agent, allegedly pulled off the theft of nearly 650 pounds of cocaine from a BNE evidence locker in Riverside July 4, 1997. Ruelas, recently fired by the CHP, was arrested in Fresno Sunday night after he had planned to meet Wilcox at the Fresno airport. Wilcox, who lives in Fresno, could not successfully pass through a metal detector. An attendant asked whether he "had a wire running down his leg." At that point Ruelas, who lives in Temecula, turned and walked away, only to be arrested by law enforcement officers a short time later, authorities said. He appeared Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Lawrence J. O'Neill, who ordered him detained in custody and transported to Southern California for further proceedings. Although Assistant U.S. Attorney Carl Faller declined to comment on Wilcox's role in the case, an affidavit filed here Tuesday revealed he has been cooperating with investigators and provided details of the cocaine theft. It also revealed that Wilcox had been indicted in Fresno Nov. 18 on 13 counts of "structuring financial transactions in an effort to hide an unexplained accumulation of wealth." A sealed indictment was filed that day in U.S. District Court in Fresno, but Wilcox has not yet made a court appearance. Officers said Wilcox was making deposits in banks in Central California at just under $10,000. Bank officials must report a deposit of $10,000 or more to federal authorities. Wilcox and Ruelas, both 40, have been linked to former BNE agent Richard Wayne Parker, recently convicted on narcotics possession and distribution charges, in narcotics transactions that authorities say could have netted each of them up to $1 million. Authorities had suspected that Parker had help in the theft and cracked the case with the cooperation of Wilcox, who had agreed to set up a meeting with Ruelas Nov. 24 that agents secretly recorded. According to the affidavit, Parker, 44, a half brother of Ruelas, allegedly planned the cocaine theft from the BNE in Riverside and Ruelas and Wilcox carried out the crime, using copied pass keys and a code to bypass an alarm and duffel bags to carry out loads of the narcotic. Once the theft was completed, the cocaine was brought to Fresno and stored in a garage belonging to a friend of Wilcox, according to the affidavit. Parker would come to Fresno to retrieve it a little at a time, the affidavit said. The affidavit by IRS special agent Michael Moriarty accuses Parker of distributing cocaine that generated thousands of dollars beginning in the early 1990s. Parker was a BNE agent stationed in Riverside. A year after the July 4, 1997, theft, Parker was arrested in an unrelated investigation after accepting $47,000 from a narcotics sale. A subsequent search uncovered $597,000 in cash and two narcotics ledgers found in his garage, Moriarty said. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D