SUSPICION SURROUNDS OSCAR-FINDER.

Byline: Lisa Van Proyen Staff Writer

The man praised and awarded $50,000 after finding 52 missing Oscar statuettes near a Los Angeles trash bin is under investigation after his brother was accused Friday of participating in the theft, police said.

John Harris, 55, of Los Angeles, the brother of Willie Fulgear, was charged Friday with one count of receiving stolen property and one count of being an accessory to grand theft, said Lt. Horace Frank, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Fulgear contacted the media March 18, indicating that he had found 52 missing Oscar statuettes near a trash bin in the area of Venice Boulevard and Western Avenue behind a Food 4 Less supermarket.

He was awarded $50,000 for locating the Oscars and given free admittance to the Academy Awards ceremony, where he was honored for finding the statuettes.

During a ``painstaking investigation,'' detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department's Burglary-Auto Theft Division learned that Harris had stored the stolen statuettes at his Los Angeles home - about five miles away from where his brother found the valuable awards.

Though he is not a suspect, police are now investigating what, if any, role Fulgear had in the theft, said Detective Marc Zavala of the LAPD's Burglary-Auto Theft Division.

``We find it really, really, really unusual that his brother has them at his home and within a short period of time, they're found by his brother, near a Dumpster near Willie's house,'' Zavala said Friday.

Harris admitted to detectives that he stored the stolen statuettes in his home for a short period and was going to get paid money for doing so, Zavala said.

But Harris told investigators it was only a ``coincidence'' that his brother, Fulgear, found them, the detective said.

``The whole thing is highly suspicious,'' Zavala said.

Shortly after the theft from a Roadway Shipping Co. facility in Bell, Lawrence Ledent, a truck driver from Los Angeles, and Anthony Hart, a dock worker from La Puente, were arrested and charged with grand theft.

Ledent pleaded guilty to grand theft and is awaiting sentencing; Hart has been indicted by a grand jury and his trial is pending.

Harris, who is a street sweeper for the city of Santa Monica, is a friend of Ledent's, police said.

After receiving the $50,000 reward, Fulgear claimed that most of the award money had been burglarized from his home as he visited relatives in the South.

But several witnesses who live inside Fulgear's home said they did not believe a burglary had taken place, Zavala said.

Fulgear could not be reached for comment.