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.