Silberman’s Words Turned Against Him

San Diego financier Richard T. Silberman embarked upon a deal to launder cash knowing full well that it had been portrayed as the profits of Colombian cocaine trafficking, federal prosecutors sought to prove Friday through dozens of secretly recorded tapes.

Using his own words against him, prosecutors played dozens of the tapes on which Silberman is heard cryptically negotiating the first of two deals that are central to the case against him. Repeatedly, Silberman pleaded with the key FBI undercover agent in the case for even more business, according to the tapes.

The agent, Peter Ahearn, who posed as the representative of Colombian drug lords, testified, however, that, for all the essential tapes in the case, there is no tape of the first meeting at which that first deal was discussed. Ahearn said that a hidden recorder he wore to the meeting didn’t work.

Silberman, who once served as a top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., sat impassively throughout a full day of the tapes and explanatory testimony by Ahearn. He showed no emotion.

Silberman, 61, is standing trial on seven counts stemming from allegations that he laundered $300,000 characterized by Ahearn--who pretended to be Pete Carmassi, an agent of Colombian drug traffickers--as narcotics profits. He was arrested in April, 1989, in a Mission Bay hotel room, purportedly while negotiating another deal.

If convicted, Silberman could be sentenced to a maximum of 75 years in prison. Four other men were also indicted in the alleged money-laundering scheme. Two of the four have pleaded guilty over the past month, each to a single count, and one of those two, Jack Norman Myers, 44, a Malibu investment banker, is expected to testify against Silberman.

The other two, reputed mobster Chris Petti, 63, of San Diego, and Darryl Nakatsuka, 43, of Los Angeles are scheduled to stand trial July 17. Petti attended as a spectator during most of Friday’s testimony.

In 31 audiotapes and one lengthy videotape backed up by comments from Ahearn, prosecutors began Friday, the first full day of testimony, to make their case against Silberman. Defense attorney James J. Brosnahan will get his chance at cross-examination after Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder Jr. is done with each witness.

The first deal, according to Gorder, involved a swap of $100,000 for stock in a Silberman gold mining subsidiary.

It was first discussed at a Nov. 9, 1988, lunch meeting at the Stardust Hotel coffee shop in Mission Valley, where Petti introduced Silberman to Ahearn. Also in attendance at the meeting was government informer Robert Benjamin, who had introduced Ahearn to Petti.

Ahearn testified that, though Silberman was interested in a $500,000 deal, his bosses insisted on a test run of $100,000. “At that time I specifically laid out the fact that the cash was from Colombian cocaine dealers,” Ahearn said.

“Petti broke in and told Dick it was the right thing to do,” Ahearn said.

Though Ahearn hid a tape recorder in a sock on his left ankle, he found when the meeting was over that the switch had gotten stuck at some point in the off position. The upshot, he said, was that the meeting produced no usable tape.

At various times through the first deal, Ahearn testified, he reminded Silberman for whom he supposedly worked.

On Nov. 12, Ahearn said in a call from a pay phone along a New Jersey highway that “all they know is, is, you know, all they know is the coke.” On Nov. 23, according to a transcript of another call, it was “these Colombians they, they understand and they’re trusting me with the money and that’s not a problem, OK?”

On Dec. 2, Ahearn told Silberman in a phone call it’s “something they go through with uh, the uh, the drug types, and that’s the way it goes.” According to a transcript of the call, Silberman said, “Let’s . . . let’s not even uh, use any of the words anymore, OK?”

A few days before, on Nov. 30, Nakatsuka had swung the deal into motion by picking up $100,000 in cash from Ahearn at a Los Angeles hotel room. Prosecutors charge that Nakatsuka was acting at Silberman’s direction.

It was too risky to appear himself, Silberman told Ahearn in a phone call earlier in the day. “I mean, uh, you know, up and down this state I am so . . . visible,” he said.

In that call, Silberman let Ahearn in on a code for the pickup. The couriers had been instructed to say they were “Baja.” Ahearn, Silberman said, was to be “Mexico.”

In the same call, Silberman told Ahearn: “But, uh, you, you and I are in agreement that, uh, that basically what I, what I tell everybody is that, these, this money is coming from people who are in Mexico.”

He added: “That’s where all my stuff comes from. That’s, you get it?”

FBI agents secretly videotaped the scene in the hotel room when, that night, Nakatsuka picked up the cash. Long segments of the 25-minute tape--about three minutes at one point--are taken up with nothing but the sounds of shuffling bills and a picture of Nakatsuka, bent over a table in coat and tie, counting the money.

Ahearn said he put the cash--in $100 bills--in a shoe box and wrapped it with a ribbon and bow, to make it look like a holiday gift. When Nakatsuka was done, the courier put the shoe box in a hotel laundry bag and took off, Ahearn said.

A few days later, through an another undercover FBI agent, Ahearn received a certificate saying he owned stock in Silberman’s gold mining company.

As for the money, it was broken into smaller sums and wired to Hong Kong, to a bank account controlled by Silberman, prosecutors contend.

The second of the two deals in the case involves a swap of $200,000 for U.S. Treasury bonds. Ahearn is expected to discuss that deal when testimony resumes Tuesday.