Slain Lawyer Flaunted Cash, Drew Suspicion

Last March, Russell Bledsoe proffered $25 gifts and thank you notes to six Santa Clarita National Bank employees who had proven especially helpful with a $650,000 transaction.

The courtly gesture was wasted.

Six months earlier, bank officials secretly had alerted federal agents to the elderly lawyer’s sudden appearances with cash-stuffed briefcases and sidekicks carrying guns in their belts.

Bledsoe had been under almost constant surveillance until early Thursday morning when he was shot to death at his fortified Sylmar home by Los Angeles police, who say they were returning Bledsoe’s fire. Police had gone to Bledsoe’s home to serve a search warrant.

Officer Robert Gallegos, wounded in the hand during the exchange, is listed in good condition at Holy Cross Hospital.

Authorities said Bledsoe, 71, was second in command of a complex scheme that illegally channeled at least $7 million in cocaine profits into bank accounts since late 1985. A dozen associates, 11 in the Los Angeles area and one in Miami, were arrested in the case Thursday, and two others are at large.

The alleged mastermind of the operation, Alvaro Salcedo of Miami, will be extradited to California in about two weeks, said Assistant U.S. Atty. John Steven Gordon. A variety of narcotics, tax and money-laundering charges are to be filed against the suspects before a March 12 preliminary hearing, he said.

According to friends and neighbors, Bledsoe made a quiet, respectable living as a specialist in international law. Born in 1915 in Portland, Ore., he was graduated from Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles and was admitted to the California State Bar in 1949.

Until about a year ago, he was active in St. Ferdinand’s Catholic Church in San Fernando, where he had applied his business acumen as parish president.

“He was the one who tried to keep the meetings organized and flowing,” said the Rev. Scott Hill, the church’s associate pastor. “He tried to bring structure and organization to the council. He was the one who made sure everyone prepared their budgets and submitted their reports.”

Don Marx, the parish’s current president, was stunned by the news of Bledsoe’s death and his alleged involvement in the drug trade.

“I couldn’t believe it when they showed his picture on TV last night,” Marx said.

“I just literally couldn’t move. I’m having trouble moving and functioning today.”

Oddly, however, Bledsoe appears to have made little more than nominal effort to disguise his activities, showing up at banks with hefty cash deposits.

A 93-page affidavit filed in the case details the undercover investigation of the alleged money-laundering ring, and portrays a relative lack of precaution exercised by Bledsoe and others in the group.

Bank Officials Alerted

On Nov. 14, 1985, Arthur Newman of Los Angeles, one of those arrested, told officials of First Interstate Bank on Ventura Boulevard in Encino that $1.2 million in cash “was being flown in from Costa Rica, and that several people traveling from different directions would be coming with the money,” according to the court document.

The document said Newman showed up with Bledsoe, three Latino males, one who spoke only Spanish and another “who appeared not to have shaved in two or three days,” and $300,000 in $100 bills.

Newman was overheard scolding one of his companions: “Next time, you make sure they get the message right. Twenties take too long to count--we were supposed to have hundreds,” the affidavit said.

Bledsoe squabbled with bank officials over details involved in filling out a currency transaction report, a document that allows federal authorities to account for bank transfers of more than $10,000.

The cash deposited--like the currency deposited in 77 other transactions at various banks--drew reactions from narcotics-sniffing dogs, the affidavit said. As in many of the other transactions, the cash was funneled to an account held in a New York bank by a firm that specializes in international money exchanges, according to the affidavit.

The money was bound for South America, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office.

Bledsoe himself raised suspicions of bank officials on Dec. 6, 1985, at the Santa Clarita National Bank on 12755 Sherman Way in North Hollywood. Acting in his capacity as the attorney for a Northridge firm, Sorrentino Construction, he showed up to deposit $226,000 in cash. Bank employees saw a gun tucked into the waistband of an unidentified man accompanying him, the affidavit said.

The transaction was all the stranger because bank officials knew that Sorrentino Construction usually would deposit no more than $40,000--by check--and that the firm “had incurred some financial setbacks,” according to the affidavit. But that apparently did not keep Bledsoe from irately demanding whether an IRS agent in the bank was there to investigate the Sorrentino account.

He wasn’t.

But Bledsoe and his associates were being watched nonetheless. Bank cameras recorded their transactions. Agents with the Financial Investigations Task Force, a joint effort of the IRS, the U.S. attorney’s office, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Customs Service and local law enforcement agencies, shadowed cash couriers throughout the Los Angeles area. One undercover agent, posing as a vice president at American International Bank in Los Angeles, reportedly struck a deal with one of the suspects, Wally Godoy. Godoy allegedly gave the agent a 1% cut of all transactions he would expedite with phony documents “for a friend in the shrimp business,” according to the affidavit.

In total, Bledsoe orchestrated the transfer of about $2.1 million through Sorrentino Construction, $1.8 million through Wally’s Liquor Market, 1955 S. San Pedro St., Los Angeles, almost $2 million through VIP Escrow in Arcadia, and $358,000 through Madeira Intex Inc., doing business as Tele-Travel International, the document said.