Judge Aguilar Charged With Racketeering

A federal grand jury Tuesday indicted U.S. District Judge Robert P. Aguilar and two other men, both linked by authorities to organized crime, on eight counts of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and racketeering.

The wide-ranging indictment is the fourth to be handed down against a federal judge in this decade, and the first ever under the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which was designed to help combat organized crime.

Named with Aguilar, 58, in the 22-page indictment were Abe Chapman, 83, and Michael Rudy Tham, 69.

Chapman, a reputed mob killer who has spent 30 years in prison for heroin trafficking, is related to Aguilar through marriage. Tham, reportedly Chapman’s friend, was convicted in 1980 of embezzling $2,000 from a Teamsters Union local that he ran in San Francisco.

Aguilar stands accused of improperly interfering in three unrelated federal criminal cases. According to the indictment, he allegedly:

- Approached another federal judge, Stanley A. Weigel, on several occasions, seeking without success to obtain favorable treatment for Tham, who was trying to reverse his 1980 conviction and demand $200,000 in back pay from his union. However, Weigel excused himself from the case before it was decided.

- Used his influence with a third federal judge, Samuel A. Conti, in another failed effort to help an associate, Ronald V. Cloud of Fresno, a former Nevada casino owner. Cloud, accused of bank fraud, eventually was convicted.

- Provided “advice, counsel and assistance” to former law client Vera Hoff when she fled California for Mexico after being convicted of tax evasion. Hoff was arrested last year in Texas as a result of the Aguilar investigation.

The indictment states that the judge’s pattern of interference makes him subject to the unusual racketeering charge.

In the course of trying to assist Tham, Aguilar also is accused of alerting Chapman that federal agents had tapped his phone. Chapman was the intermediary between Tham and Aguilar, while at the same time arranging a job for Aguilar’s brother, Luis (Lou) Aguilar.

Later, according to the indictment, Aguilar illegally told one of Chapman’s lawyers to lie to FBI agents and the grand jury, and then lied himself.

Hoff’s lawyer, Randy Sue Pollock, said the former legal secretary has given grand jury testimony against Aguilar, her former employer and later her lawyer in the tax case. In exchange, Pollock said, Hoff will not serve additional time for fleeing the country in 1980 and will receive a favorable commendation from prosecutors when she goes up for parole on the tax charge in September.

Aguilar could faces up to 55 years in jail and a $2-million fine. Chapman and Tham could each be sentenced up to 10 years and fined $500,000.

Tham, whose probation has been revoked because of his meetings with Chapman and another convicted felon, Richard Labue, is in jail. Aguilar has offered to surrender to authorities on July 12 or 13. Chapman’s whereabouts were not made public by authorities.

Before the indictments were handed down shortly before 5 p.m., Aguilar’s defense lawyers, Charles Garry and Patrick Hallinan, said they will recommend that Aguilar take a leave of absence from the bench to help to prepare his own defense.

Aguilar, like all federal judges, was appointed for life and can be removed as a judge only if impeached by the U.S. Senate.

Garry and Hallinan, both of San Francisco, also said that they are planning a “very aggressive” defense to exonerate their client.

They said the charges against Aguilar are not a legitimate prosecution, but an attempt to wipe out a frequent, vocal opponent of the conservative doctrine of the Reagan and Bush administrations.

Authorities have not revealed what prompted the investigation of Aguilar. But in April, 1987, the FBI obtained court approval to record the judge’s phone conversations in his chambers and home. Conversations were monitored until mid-1988.

Authorities did not say how the investigation began, but at the same time they were wiretapping Aguilar, the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force in San Francisco was involved in a broad investigation of fraud in health care benefit packages being peddled to unions in California.

Chapman and Tham were wiretapped and were among the targets of the labor investigation. Though not indicted in that case, they are now co-defendants with Aguilar.

Besides the relationship through marriage, Aguilar is said to have seen Chapman socially on several occasions. Chapman has a criminal record dating back to the 1940s and ‘50s when law enforcement identified him as a member of the infamous New York-based gang dubbed Murder Inc.

Known to newspaper readers in the 1950s as “Abe the Trigger,” Chapman spent roughly three decades in prisons, including a stint at Alcatraz for drug smuggling.

A source who knows Chapman told The Times that he has boasted of having a “very close connection to Aguilar,” and “intimated strongly that he is a position to get things done with Aguilar.”

It is not known whether Aguilar knows Tham, a former Teamsters leader in San Francisco, but the two are connected by Chapman. Tham served four months in prison, but faced having his probation revoked last year after the FBI spotted him associating with ex-felons, his longtime friend Chapman among them.

Authorities believe that Aguilar agreed at Chapman’s behest to approach Senior U.S. District Judge Stanley Weigel, who was handling Tham’s case. Weigel, who did nothing improper, recused himself from Tham’s case last April. Another judge sentenced Tham to five years in prison earlier this year.

Details of Aguilar’s questionable dealings surfaced last September when it was reported that he accepted a loan from Cloud, 70, former owner of Cal Neva Lodge, a casino at Lake Tahoe. Cloud, a former client of Aguilar, was later convicted in a 1985 bank swindle.

Cloud bought the Cal Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe from financier Kirk Kerkorian in 1980. The casino-hotel had gained notoriety in 1963 when former owner Frank Sinatra lost his gaming license for entertaining former Chicago Mafia don Sam Giancana there.

Aguilar was among the Cal Neva patrons sometime between 1980 and 1983. Cloud has said that he “comped” the judge, meaning the casino provided services free of charge. He also lent Aguilar money in 1983, payable “by my estate at my death,” according to a letter from Aguilar to the Judicial Ethics Committee of the federal courts.

Aguilar’s reporting of the loan on his financial disclosure reports was confused. Although he received the loan from Cloud in 1983, he first reported it in 1987. He reported the amount variously as not exceeding $10,000 and on another as $12,000.

Aguilar, who has refused all comment about the case, has not been hearing cases for the last 10 days.