Ex-S.F. officer pleads guilty, will testify in corruption case

A former San Francisco police officer, one of three veteran officers charged in a major corruption case, has pleaded guilty to stealing money and property from suspects and distributing confiscated drugs, and has promised to testify against his former colleagues in their upcoming trial.

Reynaldo Vargas admitted to four felony charges in U.S. District Court on Tuesday. His sentencing has not been scheduled.

In February, a federal grand jury accused Vargas, Sgt. Ian Furminger and Officer Edmond Robles of criminal conspiracies that included dealing marijuana, stealing a $500 Apple gift card and other valuables from suspects, and stealing money, drugs and other items seized in criminal cases. The indictment followed an investigation by San Francisco police and the FBI that concluded the officers, all assigned to the Mission District Station, had stolen seized marijuana in 2009, and that Vargas had delivered the drugs to a pair of informants, who sold it in return for 25 percent of the proceeds.

Furminger and Robles have pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to go to trial Nov.3.

Vargas, 45, was a police officer from 1999 until he was fired in 2012. He said in his plea agreement that “on numerous occasions” while working as a plainclothes officer at Mission Station, “I stole computers and other property from subjects during searches and arrests. I took the computers and other property, including gift cards and money, during law enforcement operations and, rather than booking them into evidence as I was required to do, I kept them for my own personal use and enrichment.”

The value of that property exceeded $5,000, Vargas said.

He also described the alleged plot to steal and distribute the confiscated marijuana.

In 2009, Vargas said, he, Furminger and Robles took marijuana from a UPS parcel that police had intercepted. He said he gave the marijuana to two people whom the three officers had been trying to recruit as informants, knowing that they would sell the drugs to others. Robles had agreed to the plan, but Furminger was unaware of it until shortly afterward, Vargas said.

On other occasions, Vargas said, he allowed confidential informants to keep some of the drugs they had been directed to buy as part of undercover operations “as compensation for their work.”

Furminger’s lawyer, Brian Getz, said Thursday that Vargas’ testimony, if truthful, wold not implicate his client.

“We expect him to tell the truth and to testify in a manner that benefits Sgt. Furminger,” Getz said.

Vargas’ attorney, Harry Stern, said Vargas, if called as a witness, would provide “information that probably benefits both sides, to one degree or another.”

In his guilty plea, Vargas “expressed extreme remorse and apologized to the community and the Police Department for his disgraceful conduct,” Stern said.

Vargas had a checkered history with the Police Department. He was suspended for six months in 2002 after being accused of gouging a man’s face with a broken crack pipe after taking the man off a cable car for fare evasion.

In 2011, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi disclosed surveillance videos from a single-room-occupancy hotel showing narcotics officers, including Vargas, taking property that was never accounted for.

Vargas was fired for unrelated reasons in 2012 and filed suit in November 2013 to challenge his dismissal. The suit said he was terminated for putting in for overtime while testifying in court cases during regular hours, a practice that Vargas said was common among other officers.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko