U.S. Attorneys Seek Stiff Fine for Silberman : Court: Defense lawyers say the convicted financier, who is facing sentencing, is financially ruined and could not pay a $75,000 fine.

Convicted financier Richard T. Silberman, facing a lengthy prison term after admitting his involvement in a scheme to launder alleged drug money, should also pay a $75,000 fine when he is sentenced Monday, federal prosecutors contended Friday.

But, in legal papers also filed Friday, Silberman’s attorneys said the one-time governor’s aide is ruined financially and can’t afford a fine.

In the papers, which covered a wide range of subjects in an attempt to rebut federal investigators’ pre-sentence claims, defense attorneys also provided new details about Silberman’s suicide attempt last February in Las Vegas.

After writing his wife, San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding, a farewell note, Silberman drank heavily and took an overdose of pills that included tablets that had been prescribed for a family dog, defense lawyers said. But he is no longer a suicide risk and will adapt well to prison, preferably a minimum-level security camp, they said.

Silberman, 61, pleaded guilty Aug. 24 to a single felony count of conspiring to launder cash by violating technical federal currency laws. As part of a plea bargain struck with federal prosecutors, he also agreed to drop an appeal of the sole count on which he was convicted June 28 after a two-month trial, a violation of the same technical currency laws.

Prosecutors, who were spared the burden of a second trial by the bargain and agreed to drop four other charges against Silberman, have agreed to recommend Monday to U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving that Silberman serve 41 to 51 months in prison--for both counts, to run concurrently.

Prosecutors also have agreed to urge Irving not to impose more than a 46-month term.

In the papers filed Friday, however, prosecutors indicated that federal investigators have recommended to Irving that Silberman should spend significantly more time in prison--a sentence of up to 63 months.

Silberman, who once served as a top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., was charged with directing a scheme to launder $300,000 in cash that an undercover FBI agent had portrayed as the proceeds of Colombian drug profits. If convicted on all counts, he could have faced 75 years in prison.

Four other men have been charged in the complex case, two of whom already have pleaded guilty to a single felony count. Silberman’s plea bargain did not include the two others--including reputed mobster Chris Petti, 63, of San Diego--who are due to stand trial Oct. 3.

Silberman’s Aug. 24 guilty plea set in motion the preparation by federal probation department investigators of a pre-sentence report, a recap of the case for Irving to consider in imposing a sentence.

The report, which contains independent investigation by probation officers, is commonly prepared for federal judges in criminal cases. After sentencing, federal prison officials often use the report for housing and work assignments.

The reports are kept confidential. But according to papers filed Friday by Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder, the lead prosecutor in the case, probation officers recommended a sentence of 51 to 63 months.

Since the reports are confidential, Gorder did not actually disclose the length of the term recommended by probation officers. The 51-to-63-month range is readily obtained, however, by calculating references to the federal sentencing guidelines, which use a point system to determine sentences.

Defense lawyer George C. Harris said in the defense papers only that the plea bargain calls for a 41-to-51-month term.

Irving is free to accept or reject the plea bargain or the probation recommendation. The two counts could earn Silberman a maximum of 15 years in prison.

Harris, meanwhile, indicated that Silberman contested various other probation assertions.

The probation report, Harris said, recommends a fine because of the “potential profits” Silberman stood to realize in connection with the $300,000 scheme. Harris did not disclose the amount of the fine probation officers recommended.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Gorder also did not disclose the probation recommendation. But in his own legal papers, Gorder said Silberman should pay a $75,000 fine.

That, Gorder said, was essentially the amount of money that recently obtained Swiss bank records indicated that Silberman pocketed on the first of the two transactions in the case, a November, 1988, swap of $100,000 for stock in a financially ailing Silberman gold-mining subsidiary, Yuba American Gold.

According to Gorder, Silberman used two overseas corporate entities to conceal ownership of Yuba stock, an interest that was never disclosed to Yuba directors or shareholders. “As things went from bad to worse at Yuba, (Silberman) decided to cash out his holdings by selling out to Colombian narcotics dealers,” Gorder said.

The second deal involved a February, 1989, swap of $200,000 for U.S. Treasury bonds.

Harris, however, said in defense papers that a fine was not warranted.

Most of the testimony at the trial was that Silberman did not realize “substantial personal profit” from either of the two transactions in the case, Harris said. And under the plea bargain, Silberman already has vowed to pay the government $5,500, the money prosecutors consistently have contended he made on the second of the two deals, Harris said.

Besides, Harris said, the “simple truth” is that Silberman “is already ruined financially” because of the case, Harris said. He did not elaborate in the papers and declined further comment Friday.

Harris did say in the legal papers that “certain assets” have been pledged to secure “unpaid legal fees.” Probation officers failed to include those debts in a tabulation in the pre-sentence report of Silberman’s net worth, which meant Silberman’s “debt or negative net worth is seriously understated,” Harris said.

Golding could not be reached Friday for comment.

The probation report also details Silberman’s suicide attempt, Harris said. But it neglects many aspects of Silberman’s account of the attempt, Harris said.

Upset because he believed he could not get a fair trial before Irving, Silberman flew to Las Vegas on Feb. 15. After checking into the Las Vegas Hilton, Silberman, who drank infrequently, drank heavily and wrote a farewell note to Golding, Harris said.

Then, Harris said, Silberman took “all the medication he had gathered” before leaving his La Jolla home. That included Halcion, a sleeping pill, and a barbiturate prescribed for a family dog to stop seizures, Harris said.

Silberman drifted in and out of consciousness for a day and a half before he was found and rushed to a Las Vegas hospital, Harris said. According to hospital records, Silberman was dehydrated, “extremely lethargic,” his pupils could not follow a doctor’s finger and his speech was slurred, Harris said.

Now, though, Silberman, who spent about two weeks in a San Francisco psychiatric hospital after leaving the Las Vegas hospital, is at no further risk of another suicide attempt, so prison officials need not take the Las Vegas trip into account, he said.