Silberman Admits He Knew It Was Drug Money : Justice: Former top state official pleads guilty to conspiring to launder cash. He now faces 41 to 51 months in federal prison.

Admitting finally that he believed he was laundering drug money, financier Richard T. Silberman closed the federal case against him Friday by accepting a plea bargain and pleading guilty to a single felony count of conspiring to launder cash.

Under the deal, Silberman, 61, a one-time governor’s aide, also agreed to waive an appeal of the sole count on which he was convicted in June after a two-month trial, a violation of federal currency laws. He also vowed not to bring appeals on any adverse rulings that occurred earlier in the case.

As detailed Friday in The Times, the plea bargain also calls for Silberman to go to prison. Prosecutors, who are spared the burden of a second trial and who agreed to dismiss four other charges against Silberman, will recommend when Silberman is sentenced on Sept. 25 that he serve 41 to 51 months in prison, according to a formal plea agreement filed Friday.

Silberman’s plea marked his first admission of guilt in an alleged scheme to launder $300,000 in cash that an undercover FBI agent had portrayed as the proceeds of Colombian drug profits. He and his wife, San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding, previously had maintained his innocence on all charges.

Four other men have been charged in the complex case, two of whom already have 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--who are scheduled to go to trial next month.

In the plea agreement, Silberman said he had conspired to violate technical federal currency laws. But he also admitted that the way he did that was by structuring a deal so that thousands of dollars he believed to be drug proceeds were broken into smaller sums, then sent overseas to a bank account whose number he supplied.

Silberman was arrested 16 months ago in a Mission Bay hotel room. But he conceded Friday for the first time that he believed the cash came from drug trafficking.

Contradicting his trial testimony--in which he said he “would have gotten up and walked out” if he had thought he was dealing with drug money--Silberman said Friday that, when the undercover agent told him the cash came from drug profits, he “believed that to be true.”

Silberman declined to comment on the change--or on the plea bargain--after either of two hearings Friday before U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving. Sent to jail by Irving immediately after being convicted of the sole count on June 28, Silberman appeared pale and walked stiffly but answered questions from the judge at both hearings in a firm voice.

Silberman’s lawyer, James J. Brosnahan of San Francisco, also declined to comment directly on the contradiction between the trial testimony and the plea agreement. The agreement “very accurately describes the sequence of events” in the case, he said, but did not elaborate.

Brosnahan said the plea bargain, struck after five weeks of talks, was a “reasonable disposition” because it should enable Silberman to get on with his life--though the near future will include a prison term.

“What it means for Mr. Silberman is that he can plan the rest of his life in some kind of orderly way,” Brosnahan said. The past few months, which included not only a contentious trial but Silberman’s February disappearance and suicide attempt in Las Vegas, have been particularly wrenching for Silberman, Brosnahan said.

Golding declined to comment on the bargain, saying she did not feel it would be appropriate because Silberman is still awaiting sentencing.

But a relative of Silberman’s said, “It’s very tough. It’s real hard.”

Still, said the relative, who frequently attended the trial and asked not to be named, “There’s finally some relief that there will be closure. There’s certainty. It’s going to be over. All the family is very supportive. We don’t believe he’s any different than he’s always been.”

Upon arrest, prosecutors contended, Silberman already had concluded 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 firm.

According to FBI notes, 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’s chief of staff and as secretary of the Business and Transportation Agency, among other positions, had been a key player in statewide 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 jury deadlocked, heavily for conviction, on five charges, including two counts of money laundering and the single count of conspiring to launder money.

It convicted him, however, of a technical charge of structuring a transaction to avoid the paper work that federal law requires for any cash transaction over $10,000.

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

If convicted on all six counts that went to the jury, Silberman could have drawn up to 75 years in prison.

He already faced up to 10 years for the sole conviction. The guilty plea to the conspiracy charge could bring Silberman up to five more years in prison, for a total of 15, Irving said Friday.

Under the plea bargain, however, prosecutors agreed to recommend a total sentence of 41 to 51 months for both counts, and to urge that it not exceed 46 months, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder, the lead prosecutor in the case.

Prosecutors also agreed to recommend that Silberman be assigned to a minimum-security facility, Gorder said.

Irving, however, need not follow sentencing recommendations and remains free to impose the sentence he feels just, Gorder said. Irving indicated Friday, though, that he already was “inclined” to assign Silberman to a minimum-security prison.

Under new federal sentencing rules that abolished parole, convicted criminals must serve 85% of a sentence, Gorder said. If Irving imposes a 46-month sentence, Silberman would be free in just over 39 months from June 28, when he first went to jail, or October, 1993.

The plea bargain also calls for Silberman to pay the government $5,500, the money prosecutors contend Silberman earned on the stock deal, the first of the two transactions. He also agreed to forfeit his interest in any cash, stocks or bonds in the case.