EX-CHP OFFICER TO PLEAD GUILTY IN MONEY LAUNDERING

Michael Wilcox Also Has Agreed To Have His Case Moved To Los Angeles.

A former California Highway Patrol officer from Fresno whose cooperation
helped crack a major Southern California drug case will plead guilty to
charges that he attempted to hide money that authorities said he made as a
result of drug deals.

In documents filed in U.S. District Court in Fresno, Michael Wilcox, 40,
agreed to plead guilty and have his money-laundering case transferred to
Los Angeles.

Wilcox, who also has been charged in the drug case, has been cooperating
with authorities.

His plea agreement in the Fresno case says he also has agreed to plead
guilty to drug charges in Los Angeles, but that he will not be charged with
drug trafficking or conspiracy.

The prosecutors also have agreed to recommend that whatever sentence Wilcox
receives for both the drug and money-laundering counts will be served
concurrently.

Wilcox, who resigned from the Highway Patrol, originally was charged in
federal court in Fresno with 13 counts of "structuring financial
transactions" in an effort to hide an unexplained accumulation of wealth.

He agreed to plead guilty to one of those counts.

Wilcox, who is free on his own recognizance, is cooperating in the Southern
California drug case against former state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement
agent Richard Wayne Parker and others. Parker already has been sentenced to
life in prison and fined $16 million in a drug case in which nearly 650
pounds of cocaine was stolen July 4, 1997, from a BNE evidence locker in
Riverside.

Officers said they cracked the case with the cooperation of Wilcox, who
allegedly told investigators he and his former Highway Patrol partner,
George Ruelas, committed the burglary with Parker's direction.

Ruelas, who was arrested in Fresno while Wilcox cooperated with
authorities, and Wilcox reportedly burglarized the evidence locker using a
key and a code provided by Parker.

According to investigators, Wilcox aroused suspicion when he began making a
series of bank deposits throughout Fresno, Merced and Kings counties.

The frequent deposits, made between February and October 1998, ranged from
$1,800 to $4,400.

Deposits of less than $10,000 usually are not reported to federal authorities.