MOORPARK : Convicted Broker to Forfeit $22,500

A Moorpark investment broker who pleaded guilty to violating federal currency law in connection with a money-laundering scheme directed by San Diego financier Richard T. Silberman will pay federal authorities $22,500, prosecutors said.

Terry Ziegler, 45, who pleaded guilty in April, had been scheduled to go to trial Tuesday on charges that he made about $37,000 in the scheme.

In a deal worked out last week before U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving, Ziegler agreed to pay authorities $22,500 of that $37,000, Assistant U.S. Atty. Carol C. Lam said.

Silberman, 61, who served as a top aide to former Gov. Jerry Brown, was sentenced Sept. 24 by Irving to 46 months in federal prison and on Oct. 2 was fined $50,000.

According to prosecutors, Silberman directed a scheme to launder $300,000 that an undercover FBI agent portrayed as the profits of Colombian cocaine dealing.

Silberman was convicted June 28 of a technical currency violation. On Aug. 24, he pleaded guilty under a plea bargain to a felony conspiracy count, averting a second trial.

The case involved two deals, according to trial testimony. The first was a November, 1988, exchange of $100,000 for stock in a Silberman gold-mining subsidiary. The second was a February, 1989, swap of $200,000 for U.S. Treasury bonds.

In each deal, the money went through Ziegler, according to trial testimony.

The bonds were supposed to be worth about $180,000 but came back with a value of $142,620, prosecutors said. Suspecting that Ziegler kept the about $37,000 difference, prosecutors sought the trial to force a forfeiture of that amount.

Ziegler was sentenced June 18 by Irving to six months in federal custody, three months in prison and three months in a halfway house. He surrendered in July to federal authorities.