Silberman’s Laundering Case Goes to Jury

Driven by greed, Richard T. Silberman led a “secret life of crime” and laundered $300,000 he believed was Colombian cocaine money, a federal prosecutor said Friday in urging a jury to convict the San Diego financier of seven felony counts.

Defense attorneys, however, argued that Silberman is innocent and maintained that the FBI should be held accountable--for not making it clear that the two deals in the case involved purported drug money and for using a “very scary” informer whom they allege threatened Silberman’s family.

After the conflicting closing arguments in the complex case, U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving told the jury the case was theirs. The panel is expected to begin deliberations Tuesday.

Silberman, 61, who once served as a top aide to former Gov. Jerry Brown, said Friday that he felt “great.” The courtroom was packed with his supporters and relatives--including his wife, San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding--and he said, “There’s a lot of strength in love and family and friends.”

The prominent San Diego businessman is charged with laundering money portrayed to him by an undercover FBI agent as the proceeds of Colombian drug deals. If convicted on all seven counts, he could be sentenced to up to 75 years in prison.

Silberman was arrested in April, 1989, moments after leaving a San Diego hotel room where, according to prosecutors, he was negotiating a third money-laundering deal.

His character emerged as a central theme in the closing arguments presented Friday.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder Jr., the lead prosecutor in the case, said Silberman had “all the advantages society could bestow.” The prosecutor said Silberman “had a lot” but “wanted more,” and showed a constant pattern of “lying to obtain an advantage in financial deals.”

Lead defense attorney James J. Brosnahan, however, called Silberman a “decent man.” The FBI decided to “get him,” and Silberman has been “pushed to the jailhouse door,” Brosnahan said.

Four other men were indicted with Silberman, but he is being tried alone. Two of the other four have pleaded guilty to felony charges connected to the case. The two remaining men, including reputed mobster Chris Petti, are scheduled to stand trial Sept. 25.

Silberman’s arrest came after a lengthy FBI investigation that focused initially on Petti and mob interest in gaming operations at the Rincon Indian reservation.

The probe turned to Silberman after he called Petti, whom he had known from a San Diego barbershop, in October, 1988, to discuss a potential business arrangement. It’s what that arrangement developed into that is at the center of the case.

The trial revolved around two transactions. The first was a November, 1988, swap of $100,000--supplied by the undercover FBI agent--for stock in a Silberman gold-mining company. The second was an exchange of $200,000 for U.S. Treasury bonds.

Silberman maintains that the first deal was nothing more than a legitimate stock sale. Prosecutors contend that he was told--and understood--that the cash supposedly came from Colombian drug trafficking.

The defense contends that Silberman was coerced into the second deal by threats aimed at his family by informer Robert Benjamin, an eight-time convicted felon. Gorder said Friday that assertion was a “red herring.”

The key issue in the case, both Gorder and Brosnahan said Friday, was whether undercover FBI agent Peter Ahearn--who posed as Pete Carmassi, a front man for Colombian drug lords--conveyed to Silberman that the cash in the two deals came from drug deals.

Though the case involves some 450 secretly recorded tapes of phone calls and meetings, Brosnahan said the tapes are bare of any explicit reference to the words “drug money” or “money laundering.” That is a flaw requiring acquittal, he said.

According to the defense lawyer, the FBI was required to say to Silberman, “ ‘This is drug money, this is criminality. Throw it all over, Silberman your life is changed.’ ” Brosnahan added, “They had an obligation to do it, and they did not do it.”

Gorder, however, said that Ahearn made it clear the very first time he met Silberman, at a Nov. 9, 1988, meeting at a San Diego hotel coffee shop, that the money came from Colombian drug dealers. At various times over the next six months, Ahearn reminded Silberman for whom he supposedly worked, Gorder said.

For instance, on Nov. 12, Ahearn said in a phone call to Silberman that “all they know is the coke.” In December, Ahearn referred to the “drug types.”

In February, 1989, Ahearn said the “money came from a bunch of . . . Colombian cocaine drug lords.”

Gorder asked Friday, “How much more explicit do you have to get?”

As for Benjamin, Brosnahan said that it was an outrageous error for the FBI to use him in the case. He contended that Benjamin, who was paid $124,558 by the FBI during the investigation of Petti and Silberman--largely for an apartment, car and spending money--had a financial motive to keep it going.

It was through Benjamin that Ahearn was introduced to Petti and, subsequently, to Silberman.

Gorder replied that the only testimony that there had been threats came from Silberman, who had every reason to make them up. Benjamin assuredly had a criminal record, Gorder said. But, he asked, “Who else do you expect to be hanging around with the likes of Chris Petti?”

“All this stuff” about Benjamin “is a distraction,” Gorder said. “The real question is whether (Silberman) is guilty--not whether anyone in this courtroom would go to dinner with Robert Benjamin.”

The defense contends Silberman earned nothing in either of the two transactions. But Gorder returned repeatedly to the notion that, if anyone had a financial motivation to keep the deals going, it was Silberman.

Gorder detailed Friday how, in the first deal, $90,000 of the $100,000 was wired in December, 1988, to a Hong Kong bank account--that prosecutors contend Silberman controlled--and then to a Swiss bank.

Within a week of the time the cash reached Switzerland, two checks totaling $80,000 were wired from the same Swiss bank to an investment account Silberman maintained in New York, Gorder said.

“Now you know why (Silberman) was so eager to do another . . . stock deal,” Gorder said.

The bond deal offered not an 80% rate of return, but one of only 4% to 6%, Gorder said.