Figure in Money Inquiry to Surrender : Elusive Suspect Described as Man With Political Ties, Mysterious Past

Jack Norman Myers of Westwood, the last of four persons charged in what FBI agents say was an elaborate money-laundering scheme directed by San Diego businessman Richard T. Silberman, has made arrangements to surrender to authorities today, a U.S. prosecutor said Wednesday.

The announcement followed by a few hours the FBI’s designation of Myers, 43, as a fugitive in the case. He is a former son-in-law of entertainment magnate Lew Wasserman and a fund raiser in past campaigns of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and Mayor Tom Bradley.

Agents have alleged that Myers and others agreed to help launder $300,000 that undercover agents had said was coming from Colombian cocaine dealers.

Silberman was arrested Friday as he allegedly was negotiating to launder another $1.1 million.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder Jr. said Myers had arranged through his Los Angeles attorney, Mark Heaney, to surrender at 2 p.m. today in U.S. District Court in San Diego.

Like others already arraigned in the case, Myers is expected to be released on bail when he appears before U.S. Magistrate Roger Curtis McKee. Gorder said he probably will ask that Myers post a $200,000 personal surety bond.

Myers, also known, according to the FBI, as Myerowitz or Meyerowitz, emerges in interviews conducted with acquaintances and former associates as an elusive and unlikable figure whose sources of income have been unclear.

According to a federal affidavit released this week, he usually operated out of one of a series of small offices jointly served by a receptionist on the penthouse level of the high-rise Westwood Center at 1100 Glendon Ave.

The heavyset Myers is listed in a brochure as chairman of the board and president of First Transnational Co., a business services firm suspended from doing business as a corporation by the state Franchise Tax Board in 1985 because of its failure to file a 1984 tax return.

A receptionist who answered the telephone Wednesday said she did not know where Myers was and he was not expected. She said, however, that the firm is operating at present.

The company brochure states, “First Transnational occupies a unique position in the world of corporate ventures . . . We have carefully and sensitively structured fruitful long-term relationships with our present clients and have established powerful and diverse connections on various parts of the globe.”

Also listed as associated with the firm are James Earl (Chip) Carter, son of former President Jimmy Carter, and Frank Burns, a former official in the Brown administration.

The federal affidavit filed in federal court portrays Myers as mostly collecting money and doing other errands for Silberman in the alleged laundering scheme.

On one occasion, according to the affidavit, Myers delivered bonds to an undercover FBI agent in return for $200,000 the agent had described to Silberman as drug money, but the bonds turned out to be worth $50,000 less than promised.

Dispute Over Money

Silberman and Myers failed in their efforts to get the other parties they were dealing with to make up the difference, and, according to the affidavit, “Myers then proposed that he (Silberman) send a man named “Kaboda,” who is a member of the Japanese Yakuza (an organized crime syndicate), to have a talk with the people who were withholding the money.”

Silberman, who according to the affidavit agreed with this proposal, was earlier said to have described Myers to the undercover agent as a “guy that does work for me, here (in San Diego), and runs back and forth across the border.”

At another point, according to the affidavit, Myers, saying he was having serious financial problems, asked Silberman for help. Silberman, the affidavit said, instructed a firm he directed, Yuba Natural Resources Inc., to pay Myers $10,000 for services he had not performed. The affidavit said Myers was to send in a fake bill.

Former Myers associates contacted by The Times say they thought Myers was an investor in a Nigerian oil venture with Silberman, who served Gov. Brown in various top jobs, including chief of staff, finance director and business and transportation secretary.

They said Myers frequently traveled to Africa on Silberman’s behalf.

One former associate said Myers had attended the University of Arizona for seven years on a golf scholarship. The associates said he frequently golfed at the Brentwood Country Club in West Los Angeles, where he is a member.

Myers was married to Lynne Wasserman, daughter of the MCA board chairman, for several years. They were divorced in 1983.

Myers worked as a fund raiser in the Brown campaign in 1978 and also, according to a Bradley associate Wednesday, in a 1977 Bradley reelection campaign.

Marsha Claire Ross, an artist who has been a recent acquaintance of Myers, told The Times that she went to Washington last month with Myers, and he introduced her to U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston and former Democratic National Chairman Charles Manatt. Ross had told Myers that she was an “unofficial ambassador” for the the Polisario Front, which is fighting to establish a Saharan Democratic Republic in land controlled by Morocco, and opposes American aid to Morocco.

She said Myers appeared to be on familiar terms with Cranston, and met with the senator for 15 minutes, telling her that he would urge him to vote against Moroccan aid.

Cranston’s press secretary, Murray Flander, contacted for comment on the reported March 13 meeting, said he would have to check to verify that there was such a meeting.

Just nine days after the Cranston meeting, Ross said, she and Myers had a fight in Myers’ Westwood office and she filed a misdemeanor battery complaint against him with the Los Angeles Police Department. She said Myers threw her against a wall.

Police said Ross has not pressed the complaint. She said she wanted to press charges but was told by the city attorney’s office that any action was unlikely.

Ross said that on balance, however, she felt it worthwhile to have become friends with Myers because of the contacts she had made through him in her efforts to help the Polisario Front.

Property records show that Myers sold a home in Malibu in May of 1987 for $960,000 and records on file with the state Department of Motor Vehicles show him currently listing a residence in the Santa Ynez Valley. However, associates said he had recently moved back to Los Angeles.

Times staff writers Jenifer Warren and Michael Cieply contributed to this story.