The State - News from Feb. 13, 1986

The extortion conviction of an alleged loan-sharking operation collector was reversed by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on grounds that threatening phone calls made to people in San Diego, Burbank and Seattle were separate incidents and should have been cited in separate criminal counts, rather than a single charge. There is no way to be certain, the appellate judges ruled, that a Seattle federal court jury actually voted unanimously that Andrian N. Payseno committed one particular crime. Payseno was accused of making death threats to relatives of San Francisco bookmaker Patrick Cocco on behalf of Joseph Wiley Brown, to whom Cocco allegedly owed the $150,000 he had borrowed to prop up a failing bookmaking business. Cocco, according to testimony, went into hiding and was being hunted by Payseno.