The Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A police officer was charged with extorting $500 from a merchant to report a case of immigration fraud, authorities said.
Edwin Lee, 34, was arrested with marked money he received from the victim in a transaction monitored by the Police Department’s Professional Standards Bureau, police said.
The victim, a Korean immigrant woman, went to police after Lee allegedly solicited the money.
Lee, a six-year veteran, was charged Thursday with filing a false police report and demanding payment to perform his duties. He faces up to three years in prison if convicted.
“We’d encourage anyone who has been solicited for money by a police officer like this to contact the department or this office immediately,” said Sandi Gibbons, district attorney spokeswoman.
Lee worked in the Rampart Division, where a corruption scandal ensued after former Officer Rafael Perez told authorities that he and other officers routinely falsified evidence, framed suspects and covered up unjustified shootings in the 1990s.
Prosecutors said the woman went to the Rampart station and was introduced to Lee, a bilingual Korean American.
She told Lee she wanted to file a police report because she gave $7,500 to a man who presented himself as an attorney, authorities said. She said that the attorney claimed he would help her become a citizen but that she never heard from him again. Lee told her in Korean that he would file a report but said she would have to pay him $500, Gibbons said.
The woman, whom authorities did not identify, allegedly told him she did not have the money and would come back. Instead she went to the Professional Standards Bureau, which investigates officer misconduct.
The woman returned to the police station late last month and gave Lee $500 in notes whose serial numbers investigators had recorded. Prosecutors allege that he took the money and filed a police report claiming that the woman had also received death threats from the man who took her money.
Gibbons said Lee told the woman he had to spice up the allegations to get them properly investigated.