San Diego

A Los Angeles-area investment broker accused of participating in a money-laundering scheme with San Diego businessman Richard Silberman has been released from jail after posting a $200,000 bond.

Terry Ziegler of Moorpark was released from the Metropolitan Correctional Center Sunday, two days after he was arrested following his indictment by a federal grand jury on charges that he helped Silberman and three other alleged accomplices execute transactions designed to conceal the source of $300,000 in purported drug money.

Ziegler, 45, is scheduled to be arraigned today before U. S. Magistrate Roger McKee on the charges, which carry a maximum penalty of 35 years in prison and $1.75 million in fines. Because of additional counts filed against them, Silberman and the three other defendants--Chris Petti of San Diego, and Darryl Nakatsuka and Jack Norman Myers of Los Angeles--face an even stiffer maximum sentence: 75 years in prison and $2.75 million in fines.

Silberman, a powerful political fund-raiser married to San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding, and the other defendants are charged with laundering funds that an undercover FBI agent had portrayed as proceeds from Colombian cocaine trafficking.

Prosecutors have said that they stumbled upon Silberman during their 2 1/2-year investigation of Petti, a reputed mobster now being held in jail without bond on probation-violation charges stemming from his role in the alleged money-laundering scheme.