Scott Schenter sat in a small cubicle and dreamed big.
In his late 40s, he was a property appraiser at the assessor's office who ached to be known as an international entrepreneur.
"My current job is working for Los Angeles County, I don't like to admit it," he wrote in a 2009 email to The Times. "I would rather be known for my expertise in my marketing and finance ventures."
But he needed money, and investigators say he knew where to find it.
Schenter was the first and lowest-level county employee arrested in a wide-ranging corruption scandal at the assessor's office. His odd business dreams appear to have inspired a scheme to sell property tax breaks for cash that spread to the agency's highest level.
The investigation has also resulted in the arrests of county Assessor John Noguez, his deputy Mark McNeil and private tax consultant Ramin Salari, all of whom have pleaded not guilty and deny any wrongdoing.
Together, they shaved hundreds of millions from the county tax rolls by manipulating assessed property values, investigators and county officials say, saving millions of dollars for Salari's clients. Schenter took at least $275,000 in bribes for his efforts, according to court records.
Schenter, who has pleaded not guilty to 60 felony counts including fraud, has spent hours with The Times and investigators from the L.A. County district attorney's office this year discussing details of the alleged conspiracy and is expected to be the prosecution's star witness.
In an odd but related twist, he is also at the center of an NCAA investigation into USC's athletic program that could result in yet another post-season ban for the school.
Former co-workers in the assessor's office are still scratching their heads over how Schenter could have been at the center of such conspiracies.
"He was like a scatterbrained Walter Mitty," said a colleague who asked not to be identified because assessor's office policy prohibits employees from speaking with the media. "He was not a slick guy at all."
Acquaintances described him as an office "goofball" who arrived at work in a gold Mazda Miata, incongruously equipped with customized gull-wing doors.
He chattered constantly about his entrepreneurial aspirations. One colleague described how Schenter taught him to pump and dump penny stocks.
Schenter didn't do much to hide his dual life as an appraiser and an international man of business.
Colleagues in the Culver City office remember him having two or three private cellphones ringing in his cubicle at any given time.
Mostly, he searched for the big break that never seemed to come. "He always had another iron in the fire, he was always talking about the next big thing," said one co-worker.
Schenter's county emails from 2004 to 2011, released to The Times after a public records request, contained relatively few messages pertaining to his duties as an $85,000-per-year property appraiser. The vast majority concerned his fledgling start-ups.
He fired off dozens of messages tweaking designs, preparing presentations and negotiating small orders with manufacturers in China for solar-powered signs.
He had little in common with his alleged co-conspirators.
Salari was one of the most successful property tax agents in Los Angeles. He had a $9-million Calabasas home and drove a Ferrari to the county Hall of Administration downtown. McNeil was a graduate of Princeton University and had a law degree. And Noguez was a rising star in the local Democratic Party, seen by some as a future state legislator or congressman.
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