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.