Plea Bargain Expected in Silberman Case

In a plea bargain expected to be made final in federal court today, financier Richard T. Silberman has agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of conspiring to launder cash portrayed to him as drug money, sources said Thursday.

As part of the agreement, Silberman, 61, a former high-ranking state official, also will forgo an appeal on the sole count on which he was convicted in June after a two-month trial, a violation of federal currency laws, sources said.

The bargain calls for Silberman to serve 41 to 50 months in federal prison, though U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving holds the final say on the length of Silberman’s term, sources said. Silberman faced as much as 10 years in prison on his conviction and could have drawn up to 75 years in prison if he had been convicted on all the counts in the case.

The deal, disclosed without details late Thursday on Irving’s schedule at the San Diego federal courthouse, would mark Silberman’s first admission of guilt. Sources were reluctant to discuss details of the plea bargain because of a gag order in the case and because either side could back out before today’s court session.

Since his arrest in a Mission Bay hotel in April, 1989, Silberman and his wife, San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding, consistently had proclaimed his innocence on all charges.

Silberman was accused of directing a scheme to launder $300,000 that an undercover FBI agent had characterized as the proceeds of Colombian drug trafficking.

Four other men were indicted along with Silberman, two of whom have already pleaded guilty to a single felony count. The plea bargain does not include the two others, including reputed mobster Chris Petti, 63, of San Diego, sources said. Both are scheduled to stand trial Sept. 25.

It was unclear Thursday whether the bargain might call for Silberman to testify at Petti’s trial. Jack Norman Myers, a Malibu investment banker accused of being a courier in the alleged laundering scheme, testified against Silberman after pleading guilty to a single criminal count.

Citing the gag order imposed in the case by another judge but kept in effect by Irving, various lawyers--including Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder Jr., the lead prosecutor and Silberman’s attorney, James Brosnahan of San Francisco--declined Thursday to comment on the plea bargain.

Golding could not be reached for comment.

The plea bargain frees prosecutors from the burden of a second trial, though they had announced their intent to retry Silberman. Last month, prosecutors had said they would seek to try Silberman and Petti together next month, a move that would have emphasized Silberman’s links with the reputed mobster.

In his trial, the jury deadlocked--heavily favoring conviction--on five counts, including two charges of money-laundering and the single count that accused Silberman of conspiring to launder money.

Silberman faced as much as 10 years in federal prison on the single conviction, a technical charge of structuring a transaction to avoid the paper work that federal law requires for any cash transaction over $10,000. If convicted on all six counts that went to the jury, Silberman could have drawn as much as 75 years in prison.

A seventh count, which would have been Irving’s to consider, is a criminal forfeiture charge through which prosecutors are seeking the return of the stocks, bonds and cash in the case.

Upon arrest, prosecutors contended, Silberman already had done two laundering deals, using cash supplied by undercover FBI agent Peter Ahearn--who was posing as Pete Carmassi, a front man for Colombian drug lords--and was negotiating with Ahearn to do a third.

The first deal was a November, 1988, exchange of $100,000 for stock in a subsidiary of Silberman’s gold-mining firm, Yuba Natural Resources. The second was a February, 1989, swap of $200,000 for U.S. Treasury bonds.

According to the FBI, Silberman confessed as soon as he was arrested to laundering the $300,000 and said he was searching for funds to save his financially troubled mining firm.

According to FBI notes of the alleged confession, Silberman offered upon arrest to implicate California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, Chula Vista Councilman David Malcolm and several prominent businessmen in wrongdoing.

Brown, Malcolm and the others have denied any wrongdoing.

Silberman, who served as former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s chief of staff and as secretary of the Business and Transportation Agency, among other positions, has been a key player in statewide Democratic politics since the 1970s. His son, Craig, works for Willie Brown in San Diego.

Silberman also achieved great wealth in business, particularly in banking and fast food ventures. He was a general partner during the initial years of growth at the Jack in the Box restaurant chain.

However, his most recent venture, San Diego-based Yuba Natural Resources, consistently had trouble paying its bills, according to trial testimony.

At the trial, Silberman testified that he thought the first deal was a legitimate stock sale in a Yuba subsidiary. He also said in court that he was coerced into the second deal by threats aimed at his family by a government informer, Robert Benjamin.

The conspiracy charge against Silberman, the count at the center of the plea bargain, alleges that Silberman believed the cash was drug money.

Immediately after the jury returned the sole guilty verdict on June 28, Irving sent Silberman to the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown San Diego, where he has remained.

In light of Silberman’s disappearance and apparent suicide attempt in Las Vegas in February, the prominent businessman had to be jailed because he could not show clearly that he would not flee.