Indicted Deputy Received Cash as Loan, Father Testifies : Trial: He says he gave his son more than $128,000 to buy property. Prosecutors say the officer was a big spender with stolen drug money.

The father of an indicted Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy testified Tuesday that he loaned his son more than $128,000 to buy property in Arizona and to make other purchases that federal prosecutors contend were actually bought with stolen drug money.

Santana Cortez, speaking through an interpreter in his native Spanish, told jurors in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that he loaned the money to his son, Eufrasio G. Cortez, who is accused of skimming drug money.

Cortez and six other sheriff’s narcotics officers are on trial for allegedly stealing $1.4 million during drug raids in 1988 and 1989 and spending much of that money to buy cars, boats, vacation homes and other luxuries.

Described by prosecutors as the biggest spender among the defendants, Cortez is accused of amassing $276,000 in unexplained cash that was partly spent on automobiles, a boat and real estate--including a parcel of land and a home in Bullhead City, Ariz.

Santana Cortez, however, testified Tuesday that he gave his eldest son $80,000 to $90,000 in 1988 to invest in the Arizona property, and that two years earlier he had given him another $38,050 for other expenses, including money to purchase a home in Chino.

Asked by defense attorney James Riddet whether the money was a gift, the elder Cortez insisted that it was a loan to his son that could be used as an investment for Eufrasio and his eight brothers and sisters.

“I don’t give anything away now,” he told the jurors. “After I die it will all belong to them.”

The testimony of the 64-year-old Cortez--a Mexican immigrant and former meatpacker, who has worked largely at swap meets since 1981--was immediately challenged by prosecutors, who said income tax returns show that he only made $195 from his swap meet activities in 1989 and lacked the money to give his son.

But Santana Cortez testified that over the years--through the sale of property he owned in Mexico, an assortment of jobs and other savings--he had accumulated more than $100,000 by 1986.

Most of that money, he said, was kept in cash at home because he did not trust banks. And much of that cash eventually went to the deputy, although Cortez acknowledged that he had no papers to document the loan to Eufrasio, or to any of his other children.

“If they ask me for a loan,” he testified, “I never ask them for a promissory note or anything.”

His father’s court appearance--which preceded similar testimony by his mother--is expected to be a key part of Cortez’s effort to convince jurors that he had additional cash to spend beyond his sheriff’s salary.

Earlier in the day, some of Cortez’s relatives testified that they had taken gambling trips with the deputy and saw him with thousands of dollars in chips at blackjack tables in Las Vegas and Laughlin, Nev. Riddet suggested that the gambling excursions were another source of his client’s income.

But most of Tuesday’s proceedings centered on Cortez’s father, who first appeared before a federal grand jury in January and outlined the loan arrangement.

Santana Cortez’s grand jury appearance prompted a letter from prosecutors a month later accusing him of “obstruction of justice and perjury” and threatening him with indictment unless he changed his story, according to Riddet.