Silberman Case Begins to Unfold in Courtroom : Trial: Prosecutor says Silberman pressed for illegal business. Defense says Silberman will testify to his innocence.

Richard T. Silberman laundered cash he had been told was Colombian cocaine profits and was pressing for more business when he was arrested and confessed his guilt, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday.

Upon his arrest last year, Silberman, a prominent San Diego businessman and one-time top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., said he knew that running a money-laundering ring was a “stupid thing to do,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder Jr. said as trial began in the complex case.

Defense lawyers, however, said there was no truth to any of those contentions. There was no confession because Silberman had no reason to confess, defense attorney James J. Brosnahan said in his opening statement.

Silberman, Brosnahan promised, would take the stand to say that the first deal was legitimate, but that he was coerced into a second deal by a government informer who threatened his family.

And, though the FBI taped thousands of hours of phone calls and meetings in the investigation, there was no videotape or audio tape of the first key meeting involving Silberman or of Silberman’s alleged confession, Brosnahan said.

As the long-awaited trial kicked off Wednesday with the delivery by the lawyers of the conflicting--and lengthy--sketches of what they planned to prove over the six weeks the trial is expected to run, Silberman appeared relaxed and confident. He said he felt “real good.”

Silberman, 61, is standing trial on seven counts stemming from allegations that he laundered $300,000 that an undercover FBI agent portrayed as the proceeds of Colombian drug trafficking.

If convicted, Silberman faces up to 75 years in prison.

Four other men also were charged in the alleged money-laundering scheme. Two of the four have pleaded guilty over the past month, each to a single criminal count.

One of those two, Jack Norman Myers, 44, a Malibu investment banker, pleaded guilty Monday to failing to file paper work that federal law requires for certain currency transactions.

In exchange for the recommendation by prosecutors of a reduced sentence, Myers, who has known Silberman since both were active political fund-raisers for Brown, agreed to testify against Silberman. Myers was once married to Los Angeles socialite Lynn Wasserman, the daughter of MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman.

Terry Ziegler, 45, of Moorpark in Ventura County, agreed to a deal last month, pleading guilty to one criminal count of violating federal currency laws. It is not known whether Ziegler will testify at Silberman’s trial.

The two remaining men, reputed mobster Chris Petti, 63, of San Diego and Darryl Nakatsuka, 43, of Los Angeles, are scheduled to stand trial July 17.

Petti, who was released late last week from Terminal Island federal prison after serving nearly 13 months of a sentence imposed for violating his probation in a bookmaking conviction, appeared Wednesday mid-morning as a spectator at Silberman’s trial. He declined to comment on the case.

U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving has barred from evidence at Silberman’s trial any mention of the financier’s attempted suicide in February. Purportedly believing he could not get a fair trial before Irving, Silberman took an overdose of sleeping pills in a Las Vegas hotel room, according to his wife, San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding.

Though much of Wednesday’s proceedings were devoted to the opening statements, testimony actually began with FBI agent Peter Ahearn, the key undercover agent in the case, detailing the initial months of the investigation that led to Silberman.

By October, 1988, FBI agents had been busy for months investigating Petti and alleged mob interest in gaming operations at the Rincon Indian reservation, Ahearn said.

That October, Silberman, who had known Petti for years--they first met at a Mission Valley hotel barbershop--asked him for a meeting, purportedly looking for investors in his financially troubled gold mining company, Yuba Natural Resources, Ahearn said.

In what is likely to be a familiar pattern, Ahearn’s testimony was punctuated by the in-court broadcast of snippets of conversations gathered by FBI agents through wiretaps aimed at Petti.

Those first few tapes established only that Silberman called Petti to set up a meeting and that Petti met with Ahearn, who was secretly posing as Pete Carmassi, a representative of Colombian drug dealers interested in laundering funds. Petti originally had been introduced to Ahearn through government informer Robert Benjamin.

Prosecutors have said the key evidence against Silberman will be his own words, recorded in hour after hour of the tapes, many gathered under a novel law--used for the first time--that allows agents to wiretap even public pay phones.

Ahearn did not reach the substance of any of the deals Wednesday. But Gorder devoted his entire opening statement to their details--and Brosnahan, when it was his turn, rebutted them.

After Silberman’s calls to Petti, those two joined Benjamin and Ahearn at a Nov. 9, 1988, meeting at a Mission Valley coffee shop to discuss the first deal, an exchange of $100,000 for stock in a Yuba subsidiary, Gorder said.

Before the deal actually occurred, Ahearn made it plain to Silberman that his clients “only knew the coke,” Gorder said.

Silberman actually said he wanted to do a $500,000 deal, Gorder said. But Ahearn agreed solely to a test run and settled on $100,000, Gorder said.

Brosnahan alleged that Silberman was looking only to sell $500,000 of stock that a frustrated Swiss shareholder wanted to unload. And Silberman had “no conscious awareness” that any funds were illegal, Brosnahan said.

Instead, the lawyer said, Ahearn led Silberman to believe that the money was from Mexican investors who sought confidentiality in their financial dealings.

Brosnahan noted that no audible recording of the Nov. 9 meeting exists. Gorder said the recorder that Ahearn wore to the meeting malfunctioned.

On Nov. 30, 1988, at Silberman’s direction, Myers and Nakatsuka picked up $100,000 from Ahearn at a Los Angeles hotel room, Gorder said.

Earlier that day, Gorder said, Silberman talked to Ahearn on the phone and told him the code for that night: “You tell them you’re ‘Mexico,’ and they’ll tell you they’re ‘Baja.’ And I’ve used these guys on much bigger things, like zero problems, works like greased lightning.”

Over the next few days, Ziegler broke the money into smaller sums and eventually wire-transferred it to Hong Kong, to a bank account that Gorder said was controlled by Silberman. Later, through intermediaries, Silberman had delivered to Ahearn a Yuba stock certificate, Gorder said.

Brosnahan said the delivery of the certificate proved that the deal was just what Silberman thought it was--a legitimate business transaction. The FBI, he said, didn’t understand the intricacies of international business and was trying to prove something that didn’t exist.

Though Gorder said Silberman pressed for more deals, Brosnahan said that was not so. If Silberman had been so eager, he would have called Ahearn frequently, but the two men had no contact from Jan. 6 through Jan. 27, 1989, Brosnahan said.

Gorder said the second deal began in February. But Brosnahan said it really began in January, when Benjamin, a convicted felon who had become a government informant, called Silberman and threatened his wife, Golding, and their children.

According to Brosnahan, Benjamin said: “You think we don’t know you have a family. You think I don’t know you have a wife and children. You’ll do this deal because we tell you to do it.”

Benjamin, who was paid some $120,000 in rent, car and other expenses during the course of the FBI investigation into Petti and Silberman, had a “direct financial motive” to threaten Silberman because he was paid only when information he provided led to court cases, Brosnahan said.

Gorder, meanwhile, said the second deal, an exchange of $200,000 for U.S. Treasury bonds, began on Feb. 22, 1989 when Myers and Nakatsuka picked up the cash from Ahearn in a San Diego hotel room.

Gorder said Silberman again expressed confidence, at one point saying “the mechanism I use is so comingled--all I can tell you is no one has written us up in the newspaper.”

On March 2, $142,620 of bonds were delivered to Carmassi. Even accounting for commissions, Silberman thought Ziegler had kept too much money, perhaps up to $40,000, and discussed with Ahearn whether they should bring in Petti’s friends, some “muscle,” to talk to Ziegler, Gorder said.

Silberman decided to propose a third deal to Ahearn, at least $750,000 or perhaps $1 million, but to cut his own fees on the transaction to make up for the shortfall on the second deal, Gorder said.

Silberman and Ahearn were negotiating in a Mission Bay hotel room on April 7, 1989, when Silberman was arrested, Gorder said.

Brosnahan contended that Silberman had “no interest” in a third deal and “told Mr. Ahearn that.”

And, Brosnahan said, Silberman feared Benjamin so terribly that, when he was arrested and felt a hand on his shoulder, he thought he was about to be killed. Silberman was “oddly relieved” to learn that he was in the custody of FBI agents, Brosnahan said.

No tape, video or audio, of the alleged confession exists. Gorder said it is FBI policy not to tape confessions.