FBI Taped Payoff Deal, Jurors Told : Corruption probe: Two former legislative aides are accused of accepting money in exchange for legislation in a sting operation.

Prosecutors in the corruption trial of two former legislative aides disclosed Thursday that the FBI videotaped one of the defendants protesting that a $1,000 payment he received for illegal legislative favors was not enough and then complaining angrily when the check bounced.

The check was one of a dozen payments totaling $16,100 that Tyrone Netters, a former aide to Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles), received from dummy companies set up by the FBI as part of a sting operation, according to the prosecution. His acceptance of the cash and checks in 1986 and 1988 was an “abuse of his office of public trust,” Assistant U.S. Atty. George O’Connell told the jury.

In his opening statement, O’Connell said that the evidence would show the power of money--in direct payments and campaign contributions--to buy legislation.

O’Connell said his office began its investigation of the Legislature in 1982 after an informant told an FBI agent about conversations with the second defendant in the case, Darryl Freeman.

According to O’Connell, Freeman, a former aide to then Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), told the informant that “if you wanted to get special-interest legislation through the Legislature . . . you bought it, as simple as that.”

O’Connell also said the evidence in the case will show the power of “an unseen third house,” the employees of the Assembly and Senate, “without whose aid a bill would not get enacted into law.”

Attorneys for Netters and Freeman have said that when the secretly recorded tapes are heard in complete form, they will show that the two defendants acted properly.

On one 1986 tape, played for the jury Thursday, Freeman told undercover FBI agent John E. Brennan, who was posing as a businessman, that it would take as much as $50,000 to gain passage of a special-interest bill designed to help Brennan’s phony company.

In fact, FBI operatives paid out $54,000 to Netters and Freeman alone, according to prosecution figures, including the $16,100 paid to Netters, $20,900 paid directly to Freeman, $13,500 to Freeman’s lobbying firm and $3,500 in campaign contributions to Assemblywoman Moore.

Part of the $16,100 paid to Netters was a $1,000 check that he received from an informant, according to O’Connell. “I want $1,500. Can’t we do more?” the prosecutor quoted Netters as telling the informant.

O’Connell told jurors that he will show them a secretly made videotape of Netters eventually settling for the $1,000. A second tape segment, O’Connell said, will show Netters returning to the scene, angrily protesting that the check had bounced.

Agent Brennan, the first prosecution witness, told the jurors of the difficulties that Freeman experienced in finding a bill in 1986 that would help his bogus company, Gulf Shrimp Fisheries of Mobile, Ala., finance a shrimp processing plant near Sacramento.

Because the deadline for introducing new bills had passed, Freeman told Brennan, it was necessary to “hijack a bill”--to find an existing bill, gut it, and replace the language with the proposed Gulf Shrimp legislation.

According to Brennan, Freeman turned for help to Karen Sonoda, an aide to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco). To enlist her support, Brennan said that in May, 1986, he purchased two $500 tickets to a Brown fund-raiser. Freeman told Brennan that without the contribution, Sonoda would not have helped the legislation, which was crafted to help Gulf Shrimp and no other company.

On one audiotape made in 1986, Freeman is recorded negotiating with Netters and undercover FBI agent Brennan over a schedule of campaign contributions to Moore, who was carrying a special-interest bill that supposedly would have benefited “Gulf Shrimp.” The three men eventually agree on a payment of $2,500 at the outset to be followed by another $2,500 when the measure is approved on the Assembly floor.

“It is a bartering session, as the evidence will show, that is worthy of a flea market,” O’Connell said.

Netters, 36, has been charged with nine counts of extortion, racketeering, conspiracy, money laundering and income tax evasion in 1986 and 1988, when he was an aide to Assemblywoman Moore. Late last year, the U.S. attorney’s office announced that the evidence did not warrant an indictment of Moore.

Freeman, 44, is charged with two counts of conspiracy and aiding and abetting extortion for his activities in 1986, when he worked with Netters on the passage of the first of the two shrimp bills.

Both were caught up in the sting, code-named Brispec (for bribery--special interest). The sting already has led to the convictions of former state senators Joseph B. Montoya and Paul E. Carpenter and guilty pleas from three other legislative aides. Both Montoya, serving time at the federal prison in Boron on the Mojave Desert, and Carpenter, who lost his seat on the State Board of Equalization after his conviction, are appealing their convictions.

The existence of the FBI sting came to light on Aug. 24, 1988, when 30 investigators raided the Capitol offices of four legislators and two legislative aides. It soon became clear that the FBI, using bogus companies with names like Gulf Shrimp Fisheries and Peach State Capital, had been liberally spreading money among politicians as they sought approval in 1986 and again in 1988 for helpful legislation.

Attorneys for Netters and Freeman have argued that the case will be affected by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in a West Virginia political corruption case, McCormick v. United States. In that case, a majority of justices concluded that prosecutors had to show an explicit quid pro quo-- a promise of action in return for payment--to convict a politician charged with extortion in connection with campaign contributions.

However, O’Connell, in outlining the case to the jury, said the campaign contributions were “a direct and unambiguous exchange of campaign contributions for official action.” He said both Netters and Freeman accepted cash in what he said Freeman described as “a straight cash-under-the-table deal.”