Mexico Expands Case Against Ex-Official : Justice: Former deputy attorney general faces more charges. He is already accused of a cover-up in his brother’s murder.

MEXICO CITY —  This nation’s former deputy attorney general amassed an $11-million fortune in real estate and bank accounts here and in Texas via embezzlement and payoffs during his tenure last year as Mexico’s No. 2 law enforcement official, prosecutors asserted Wednesday.

In a detailed warrant expanding the government case against Mario Ruiz Massieu, authorities in Mexico City charged the former prosecutor, his chief aide and personal secretary with channeling ill-gotten money through front companies to buy land and homes in Houston, Acapulco, Cuernavaca and Mexico City.

They said they filled two Texas bank accounts with more than $9.4 million in cash and opened more than half a dozen peso accounts in Mexican banks.

The warrant did not specify the source of all the money. But it said that Ruiz Massieu, a member of a prominent family with close ties to former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, stole the equivalent of nearly $1 million from the attorney general’s office “for operations and special investigations that he never carried out.”

Sources close to the investigation confirmed reports published in The Times in March that much of the rest of the money came from alleged payoffs from the drug cartels that smuggle Colombian cocaine through Mexico into the United States.

Officials said Ruiz Massieu, who once was Mexico’s chief narcotics investigator, used a network of Mexican law-enforcement agents serving under him to collect the money.

Wednesday’s charges, the result of almost two months of investigation, also are part of the government effort to bolster its extradition case against Ruiz Massieu, who is being held in a U.S. prison in New Jersey. He is charged there with violating U.S. currency-declaration laws when he attempted to board a Madrid-bound flight in Newark in March.

Mexico’s attorney general already has charged Ruiz Massieu with obstructing justice, an action that allegedly occurred when he headed the investigation of his brother’s assassination in September.

That warrant charged him with covering up the alleged role of Raul Salinas de Gortari, elder brother of Mexico’s former president, in helping to mastermind the Sept. 28 killing of Francisco Ruiz Massieu, then ruling party secretary general.

The extradition hearing for Mario Ruiz Massieu--once a self-styled crusader against government corruption who angrily resigned his post in November--is now set to begin in Newark on June 13.

The embezzlement warrant suggests that Ruiz Massieu turned corruption into a business. It asserts that Jorge Stergios, his top aide, and Maria Mota Rubio, his secretary, created at least two companies, which were used to buy an Acapulco penthouse, a Cuernavaca house and land in Mexico City.

Prosecutors said they seized that property, along with five Mexican bank accounts--in Ruiz Massieu’s name or held by the front companies. The Texas accounts were seized by U.S. Customs in March.

More charges against Ruiz Massieu are expected. Mexican law enforcement officials said employees and police have testified that he regularly received suitcases of money from corrupt federal police commanders and prosecutors while serving as chief narcotics investigator for the Mexican government.

The former federal prosecutor in Baja California, for example, delivered a suitcase on a weekly basis, according to the government investigation.

Ruiz Massieu also is suspected of extracting from top federal officials in key drug trafficking states monthly “commissions,” or payoffs, in exchange for their appointments to their posts. Officials said Ruiz Massieu also is under investigation for money laundering, illicit enrichment and abuse of authority.

Fineman reported from Mexico City, Rotella from San Diego.