The modern Sacramento Division
field office opened for business on September 25, 1967,
at
2020
J Street.
1 The office had previously been
a smaller “resident
agency” under the San Francisco Division.
The new field
office was created in response to the reorganization
of
the federal judicial districts
in California and to relieve the caseload on the
San Francisco and Los Angeles Divisions. The office
had 34 counties under its jurisdiction, encompassing
the Eastern Judicial District of California. Approximately
1,700 cases were transferred from the San Francisco
division and another 600 from Los Angeles Division
upon opening the new division.
Special
Agent John H. Williams (left) was named Special Agent
in Charge; Special Agent Philip R. Sheridan
was Assistant Special Agent in Charge. The office
included another 55 agents and 37 clerical and stenographic
employees. Besides the main office in Sacramento,
the division operated 12 resident agencies located
in Auburn, Bakersfield, Chico, Fresno, Merced, Modesto,
Redding, Stockton, Susanville, Vallejo, Visalia,
and Yuba City.
The workload grew steadily as the Division handled
a wide variety of cases, including domestic terrorism,
white-collar crimes, presidential assassinations,
organized crime, espionage, and others.
1970s
In September 1975, the office investigated the high-profile
attempted assassination of President Ford by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme,
a member of the violent cult-like Manson family.
On September 5, Fromme—armed with a .45 caliber
handgun—approached President Ford, who was
in Sacramento to address the California State Assembly.
She took aim, but was immediately seized by Secret
Service agents. The Sacramento Division took over
the case, investigating Fromme to make sure that
she was acting alone. The case was code-named FROMFORD
[175-HQ-297]. Complicating this investigation was
a second assassination attempt on President Ford
in San Francisco less than two weeks later by Sarah
Jane Moore. Fromme was found guilty and sentenced
to life in prison.
 |
| Lou Peters (left) receives
an award from FBI Director William Webster. |
Like many other field offices in the
late 1970s, Sacramento began to look for ways to
apply the Racketeer and Corrupt Organizations (RICO)
Act to tackle organized criminal enterprises. The
division got a big break when members of the Bonanno
Family approached Lou Peters, a Cadillac dealer in
Lodi, California, proposing to buy his auto dealership
and use Peters as a front man to purchase other dealerships.
Peters instead went to the FBI. He agreed to cooperate
with Sacramento agents, pretending to go along with
the Bonanno plan to launder dirty money through a
chain of auto dealerships. His testimony was a crucial
part of the government's case and led to the conviction
of Joseph Charles Bonnano, Sr., on conspiracy to
obstruct a federal grand jury and perjury—the
first felony conviction of the leader of the Bonanno
organized crime family. Following Peters’ death
from cancer, the Society of Former Special Agents
of the FBI began presenting an annual Louis E. Peters
Memorial Award to private citizens who selflessly
dedicate their time and service to assist the FBI
in uncovering wrongdoing.
1980s
Throughout the 1980s, Sacramento developed important
cases against violent criminals, corrupt public officials,
and others.
The domestic terrorist group, The Order, became
a significant focus of the Sacramento Division in
the mid-1980s. The white supremacist group engaged
in
a series of violent robberies, in counterfeiting,
and in at least one murder—the killing of Denver,
Colorado, talk show host Alan Berg in 1984. The group’s
founder died in a shootout with FBI agents in late
1984. In 1985, Charles J. Ostrout, member of the
Aryan Nation and The Order, was found to have been
the "inside man" for a Brinks Armored vehicle
robbery in Ukiah, California, in a Sacramento Division
case in 1984. The robbers had gotten away with approximately
$3.6 million. In March 1986, Sacramento "Top
Ten" fugitive Richard Joseph Scutari, the last
member of The Order still on the run, was arrested
in Texas by San Antonio Division agents. He eventually
pled guilty to racketeering charges and to the Brinks
robbery. Members of the group were also charged with
and convicted of a RICO-type conspiracy and other
crimes in relation to the Berg murder.
In 1986, an investigation
by Sacramento agents led to the conviction of Joseph
Bonanno, Jr., further
weakening that Mafia crime family. Sacramento agents
showed that Bonanno was operating a fraudulent scheme
in which he promised a nine percent return on an
investment in a poster company over a 30-day period.
He then
planned a "controlled business failure" as
part of the scam. On November 13, 1986, Bonanno was
sentenced to four years in prison and five years
probation. Fellow mobster Lyle Green pled guilty
and was placed on five years probation, while Salvatore
Bonanno was acquitted. Prior to this trial, another
defendant named Virgil S. Redmond died in a truck
accident.
Not
all cases were resolved so quickly. In December 1985
a bomb exploded, killing the owner of a computer
rental store in Sacramento. This attack turned out
to be the work of a domestic terrorist who had mailed
bombs across the country since 1978 and who came
to be known as “The Unabomber” after
the FBI’s codename for the case UNABOMB. The
Unabomber ultimately killed three people and wounded
more than 20 before being arrested in Montana in
April 1996 by FBI agents and other federal authorities.
He was identified as Theodore Kaczynski, who later
pled guilty to the bombings.
Late 1980s and 1990s
In this period, public corruption and white-collar
crime were a focus of FBI Sacramento.
In 1989, following an extensive two-and-a-half year
investigation, Jerry Harris and Alejandro Puentes
Valdez were found guilty of federal conspiracy and
bribery charges. Harris had bribed small city mayors
with cash, and in return, these mayors used their
influence to assure Harris of government housing
contracts. The case represented the first public
corruption convictions in the central valley of California.
In 1988, the Sacramento Division launched a case
that came to be called BRISPEC. BRISPEC
was an eight-year FBI investigation and the first
of its kind that targeted members of the state legislature
and their aides who had accepted campaign contributions
in exchange for their votes on "special interest" bills.
The investigation led to the conviction of California
State Senators Joseph B. Montoya, Paul Bruce Carpenter,
and Alan Robbins on various RICO, extortion, and
other charges.
In 1996, Operation REZONE targeted several prominent
Fresno and Clovis county politicians who were willing
to take bribes for favorable action on pending rezoning
proposals.
In a major white-collar crime investigation in the
1990s, medical providers were charged with defrauding
California’s Medi-Cal Program of over $2.9
million—one in a series of indictments under
the Sacramento Division’s “Phony Pharm” and “Unwholesum” health
care fraud initiatives. During one scam, providers
submitted phony claims to Medi-Cal—using patient
names and identification numbers bought on the black
market—for blood tests that were never performed.
To date, more than 80 medical providers have been
charged with defrauding the Medi-Cal program of over
$38 million. Forty individuals have pled guilty.
In 1999, the Sacramento Joint Terrorism Task
Force prevented a potentially devastating act of
domestic terrorism. Three members of a right-wing
militant group were plotting to blow up two propane
tanks in Elk Grove, California. The tanks, each holding
approximately 12 million gallons of liquid propane,
were part of the largest above ground propane facility
in North America. It is estimated that their destruction
would have caused 12,000 deaths, widespread fire,
and third-degree burns among individuals within five
miles or more of the explosion.
The trio—Donald Rudolph, Kevin Ray Patterson,
and Charles Dennis Kiles—dubbed the two tanks
the “Twin Sisters” and viewed the propane
tank farm as “a target of opportunity.” The
plot originated in 1996, when many militia groups
were tasked to identify targets in their area that
were susceptible to sabotage and that, if destroyed,
would cause a major disturbance and lead the government
to declare martial law. This plan was part of a larger
conspiracy by militia groups to undermine and destabilize
the federal government. Rudolph, Patterson, and Kiles
intended to carry out the plan in late 1999.
The investigation, however, uncovered and halted
the plot. In 2002, Patterson and Kiles were convicted
of threatened use of a weapon of mass destruction.
Patterson was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison
and five years supervised release. Kiles was sentenced
to 22 years in federal prison and five years supervised
release. Rudolph was sentenced to five years in federal
prison after a plea agreement.
Post 9/11
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the
Sacramento Division made counterterrorism its top
investigative priority but continued to pursue a
wide-range of cases.
Working largely through its Joint Terrorism Task
Force that had been created in July 1998 to unite
the efforts of federal, state, and local law enforcement
and intelligence agencies, the Division pursued terrorist
plots and attempts to raise money and provide support
for terrorist activities.
In 2004, for example, a Lodi, California, man named
Hamid Hayat—who had attended a jihadi training
camp in Pakistan and ultimately returned to the U.S.
intending to wage jihad upon receipt of orders—was
arrested following a Sacramento investigation. Hayat
was convicted in April 2006.
In March 2004, Sacramento established a Field Intelligence
Group (FIG) to “provide actionable, appropriate,
and responsive intelligence support to strategic
and tactical law enforcement operations and partners
to deny, deter, or defeat national security and criminal
threats.”
In 2006, the Sacramento Joint Terrorism Task Force,
with assistance from the U.S. Forest Service and
California forestry officials, arrested three members
of the radical environmental group Earth Liberation
Front. The trio was charged with conspiring to destroy
federal property, cell phone towers, and power generating
facilities. Two pled guilty that year; the third
was convicted at trial in 2007.
In other investigative matters, the Sacramento Division
continued to successfully develop white-collar crime
cases, investigating a wide variety of medicare and
health industry fraud, mortgage fraud, and embezzlement
cases. Agents also avidly pursued child predators
and pornographers who used the Internet to target
their victims. And the Division’s Violent Crimes
Task Force pursued serial bank robbers like the “Grandpa
Bandit” and the “Spiderman Bandit” as
well as the violent gang Nuestra Familia.
For more information on Sacramento and the Bureau
over the years, please visit the FBI
History website.
1There was a Bureau office in Sacramento
in the World War I era, but it was closed in the early
1920s as
part of a significant reorganization of Bureau field
operations. During the years between this closing
and the 1967 opening of the Sacramento Division,
the FBI considered reopening an office in Sacramento
several times, concluding each time that such a move
was not needed.
