Money-Laundering Suspect Silberman Reported Missing : Sting: The prominent Democrat allegedly admitted being involved with mobsters and told authorities he feared for his life.

Richard T. Silberman, a former state official and Democratic fund-raiser who faces federal money-laundering charges stemming from an FBI sting, was reported missing Friday by his wife.

His light blue 1975 Mercedes-Benz was found in a parking lot at Lindbergh Field, where police said he was last seen Thursday evening waiting in line to purchase a ticket to Los Angeles.

Silberman’s disappearance comes two months before his scheduled trial on charges that carry a maximum prison term of 75 years in prison and $2.75 million in fines. He has pleaded innocent.

On Friday an FBI report was released in which Silberman allegedly confessed to the money laundering after his arrest, saying he had done it to save his business.

The 60-year-old businessman left his La Jolla home about 4:30 p.m. Thursday after telling family members he was going to Orange County to have dinner and meet with an attorney there.

Silberman’s wife--San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding--told police she spoke with the attorney Friday morning and learned that her husband had not shown up in Orange County. Golding then alerted police.

“This is an unexpected unaccountability,” San Diego Police Cmdr. Larry Gore said of the disappearance. “We’re going to process the car, obviously, and then we’ll be doing some follow-up investigation in terms of witnesses and so forth.”

Carol Lam, an assistant U.S. attorney, said court records showed Silberman was ordered to surrender his passport last April. However, it was unknown whether he actually had turned in the passport.

Soon after his arrest, Silberman was replaced as executive officer of Yuba Natural Resources Inc. when federal records showed that Yuba was deeply in debt. Silberman also was dropped from his $40,000-a-year post on the California Medical Assistance Commission.

In a hearing Friday morning in U.S. District Court in San Diego, government prosecutors asked that Silberman’s $500,0000 bond be forfeited because of the disappearance. But at that time, Silberman’s car had not been found. Judge J. Lawrence Irving rejected the request because not enough was known at that time about the disappearance.

Silberman, reputed San Diego mobster Chris Petti and three other men are awaiting trial on seven felony counts of laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars that they believed were proceeds from illicit drug sales. The money was provided by a man who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.

The charges shocked officials throughout the state who knew Silberman as a prodigious political fund-raiser and former state official. He had headed the state Business and Transportation Agency in 1977 under Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. He later was named state finance director and, temporarily, chief-of-staff in Brown’s office.

As the case against him wound its way through federal court here, Silberman and his attorney, James Brosnahan, have contended that Silberman feared for his life because of his involvement with alleged mob figures in the undercover sting operation.

Just last week, Brosnahan claimed that Silberman was warned to “keep going” with the money-laundering scheme or he and his family would be killed. The lawyer said the threat was made by Robert Benjamin, an ex-convict turned government informant, and that Silberman was worried about his safety and that of his family.

Late Friday afternoon, a federal judge released an FBI report in which Silberman is quoted as saying that he accepted $300,000 from a man he knew as Pete Carmassi and then directed four others to launder it. The man known as Carmassi was actually an undercover FBI agent who had told Silberman the money was the proceeds of drug trafficking, the report said.

Silberman, according to the report, told the FBI agents he knew the deals were “stupid,” but he wanted the money to help save Yuba, his failing gold-mining company.

Also in federal court Friday morning, Silberman’s lawyers claimed that a mystery witness, who testified last week in pretrial hearings, had been shot at Tuesday near Newport Beach.

The witness--identified in court only as Mr. X--was driving Tuesday when four shots were fired at him from a passing vehicle, defense attorney George C. Harris said. None of the shots hit Mr. X, Harris said.

Gore said police first learned of Silberman’s disappearance when Golding notified authorities that her husband never made the dinner meeting Thursday night in Orange County.

Police said Silberman left his home in La Jolla about 4:30 p.m. and then was seen about 5:05 p.m. Thursday by Andrea Ward-Sumida, an employee at RDF Advisors in San Diego. The firm is owned by a friend of Silberman, Ward-Sumida said Friday.

She said she had no idea where he was going when he left the company suite, and she declined to discuss his disappearance.

“This has caught everybody off guard,” she said.

Gore said that after Silberman left the offices, he telephoned his daughter, Vanessa, from his car telephone. That was about 5:30 p.m., police said.

The official police missing-person report notes that he was wearing a dark blue double-breasted coat, a blue tie with white dots, gray slacks and black shoes. The report lists his bank accounts as “numerous,” the credit cards he carried as “numerous” and the reason he is missing as “unknown.”

Golding could not be reached for comment Friday but the police report makes this notation:

“Ms. Golding feels this is very unusual for her husband not to at least call her to tell her he would not be home for the evening.”