Good morning.

Today, Peter Vigneron, a journalist who’s been tracking a bribery case against Lev Aslan Dermen, a Los Angeles-based fuel trader, has this update on the case, which now involves Lee Baca, the former Los Angeles County sheriff who resigned in 2014 under a cloud of scandal:

Mr. Baca has been implicated in a bribery scheme involving a Los Angeles-based fuel trader, according to court documents released last week. The revelation has drawn further scrutiny to the Sheriff’s Department he oversaw for 15 years.

A witness in a case against Lev Aslan Dermen, the fuel trader, will testify that he saw Mr. Baca and other Los Angeles law enforcement officials accept cash bribes from Mr. Dermen, federal prosecutors wrote in a filing in Salt Lake City last Monday. Federal officials have previously identified Mr. Dermen as a “suspected crime figure” and “the leader of an Armenian organized crime group.”

Prosecutors said Mr. Dermen, 53, surrounded himself with other law enforcement officials in order to hide criminal activity in a large biofuel tax fraud scheme. Those officials include a former assistant director of the U.S. Secret Service, a former Glendale police detective and a former Homeland Security Investigations special agent. Mr. Dermen’s relationships with these officials formed an “umbrella” of protection for his criminal activity, prosecutors wrote. Mr. Dermen is charged with organizing a scheme that defrauded the federal government of more than $500 million in biodiesel tax credits between 2010 and 2016. He faces life in prison if convicted.

[Read more about the case against Mr. Baca, who was sentenced in 2017.]

The allegations against Mr. Baca, 77, come after years of controversies involving the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. Mr. Baca resigned from his position as L.A. County sheriff after he was indicted in a separate federal corruption investigation. Prosecutors in that case accused Mr. Baca of obstructing F.B.I. agents looking into inmate abuse in L.A. County jails. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison in 2017, and is appealing his conviction. A lawyer for Mr. Baca had no comment.