TEMECULA -- A county employee was arrested this week at his Temecula home on suspicion of embezzlement for his alleged role in a cell phone scheme that might have defrauded the county of more than $100,000.

Raymond Figueroa Lopez, 42, was arrested Tuesday evening on suspicion of embezzlement and booked into the Southwest Detention Center in French Valley, where he was being held in lieu of $120,000 bail.

He was charged with two counts of embezzlement as well as two enhancements alleging that he embezzled public funds and that he took property valued at more than $65,000.

Lopez pleaded not guilty Thursday to all the charges.

Law enforcement authorities said Thursday that Lopez, a communication technician at the Riverside County Regional Medical Center in Moreno Valley, used his connections to order hundreds of phones through the county's account with a cell phone provider and then sold, in cash transactions, many of those phones to county employees.

The list of people who bought the phones from Lopez, who reportedly used some of the money to buy a new truck and personal watercraft with cash, includes hospital employees and Sheriff's Department personnel, investigators said in a declaration to support his arrest.

Some of the people who told police they bought a phone from Lopez said it was for their personal use or for use by family members. In some instances, the county employees upgraded their phones through Lopez, paying him the difference for a better phone, the declaration states.

The scheme unraveled in the summer of 2006, authorities said, when hospital officials checked their records and found out that there should have been only 280 phone numbers assigned to the hospital. The cell phone provider's records showed 480 numbers assigned to the hospital.

"Any cell phone issued to a hospital employee would be assigned one of the phone numbers assigned to the hospital" by the cell phone provider, the declaration states.

Lopez's supervisor reportedly told investigators that the whereabouts of the hundreds of extra phones Lopez had ordered was unknown.

A district attorney's spokesman said no other arrests are anticipated.

A county spokesman declined to comment and referred calls to the district attorney's office.

Contact staff writer Aaron Claverie at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2624, or aclaverie@californian.com.