Broker Is Sentenced in Money Laundering : Finance: A judge gives the Moorpark man 6 months for his role in an alleged scheme involving San Diego financier Richard T. Silberman.

A Ventura County investment broker was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison for his role in an alleged money-laundering scheme that prosecutors contend was directed by San Diego financier Richard T. Silberman.

Terry Ziegler, who was ordered to surrender July 26 to federal authorities, had pleaded guilty two months ago to a single felony count. Originally accused of executing the complex financial transactions involved in the case against Silberman, Ziegler pleaded guilty to violating a federal currency law.

The sentence was handed down in San Diego by U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving, who agreed to prosecutors’ request for leniency. He imposed the sentence the day before a jury was to begin deliberations in Silberman’s trial.

Ziegler, 45, of Moorpark, declined Monday to comment on the sentence or on the case. He did not testify at Silberman’s trial. According to federal authorities, Ziegler was recruited in the alleged plot by a Los Angeles financier who was acting on Silberman’s behalf.

Silberman, 61, who once served as a top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., is awaiting the jury’s verdict on seven felony counts. He is accused of laundering $300,000 that an undercover FBI agent allegedly characterized as Colombian cocaine profits.

If convicted, Silberman faces up to 75 years in prison. His trial lasted for six weeks.

Ziegler was originally indicted on five felony charges in the case, counts that could have meant up to 35 years in prison.

But in a written plea agreement filed April 10, Ziegler pleaded guilty to the single count, admitting that he structured a transfer of funds to avoid filing the paper work that federal law demands for any transaction involving $10,000 or more.

He said he took $45,000, broke it into various sums under $10,000 for deposit to a San Fernando Valley thrift account and wired it to Hong Kong, to a bank account that prosecutors contend was controlled by Silberman.

The $45,000, part of the first $100,000 delivered by the undercover FBI agent in the case, later made its way to a Swiss bank account, along with most of the rest of the $100,000, prosecutors said.

Under complicated new federal sentencing rules, Ziegler’s guilty plea to the single count meant that Irving should have sentenced him to eight to 14 months in prison.

But Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder Jr., the lead prosecutor in the case, said Monday that the government sought a sentence of only six months based on Ziegler’s cooperation with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Gorder did not elaborate on the extent or duration of Ziegler’s cooperation. Immediately after Gorder’s reference Monday in court, Irving ordered sealed a June 13 letter to prosecutors from Ziegler’s defense attorney, San Diego lawyer John A. Mitchell, that apparently discussed the issue.

Irving did not elaborate, either, in imposing the six-month sentence. The judge ordered Ziegler to spend the first three months of the term in prison but said Ziegler was to spend the next three months in a halfway house.

In addition, Irving imposed a three-year term of probation to follow the six-month sentence.

Prosecutors had asked Irving to impose a $20,000 fine as well, the maximum amount possible. But Irving instead ordered Ziegler to pay the full cost of his stay in prison and all expenses associated with the halfway house.