Drug Agents Seize Attorney’s House : Law enforcement: U.S. takes over $3-million Malibu property although it has not charged lawyer with a crime. Officials say he aided smugglers.

Federal drug agents seized a $3-million Malibu home Tuesday from a lawyer who they say received the property in return for work he did for an international drug smuggling organization.

“This house is liberated,” declared one Drug Enforcement Administration agent, as he stood on the sand beneath the pink-stucco and red-tile home on a tony Malibu street. Neighbors gaped in amazement as DEA agents fanned out around the house and peered up into the windows from the beach.

The owner, Terry Fields, was not home when six agents--four from the DEA, an assistant U.S. attorney and an Internal Revenue Service investigator from Seattle--arrived. Reached at his office later, Fields said he was astounded.

“This is complete news to me,” he said. “I find this hard to believe.”

Fields was not arrested and is not under indictment. The government alleges in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court that Fields laundered drug money and performed other services for an international marijuana operation.

Tuesday’s seizure marks the latest sign of the government’s willingness to use its authority to confiscate drug assets, not just from traffickers but from accountants, bankers and lawyers, who face the loss of personal property if they purchased it with drug money.

“It’s the accountants and the attorneys who are the lifeblood of this business,” said John M. Marcello, a special agent with the DEA. “These other guys (traffickers) are risk takers, but they don’t have the education or the sophistication to pull off these financial transactions.”

The seizure of Fields’ home is the latest step in a long-running prosecution of what federal agents say may have been the biggest marijuana smuggling operation ever to do business on the West Coast. That organization, allegedly headed by William Weitz Shaffer and Christopher Kesner Shaffer, shipped 65 tons of marijuana from Thailand to Washington state in 1986 and 1987, agents said. The marijuana was valued at approximately $300 million.

Thirty-five people have been convicted in cases related to those shipments and several more are under indictment. William Shaffer was arrested in Germany earlier this year and is awaiting extradition. His brother, Christopher, is a fugitive.

In its complaint, the federal government describes Fields as a “close associate and trusted friend” of the Shaffers. The complaint alleges that Fields collected money from drug distributors in Los Angeles and laundered money for the Shaffers and other drug dealers.

According to the complaint, Fields assisted two cocaine smugglers in the late 1970s and early 1980s when they needed to transfer money from the Cayman Islands to the Far East. The complaint alleges that Fields set up an offshore corporation and bank account, which were used to launder proceeds from the cocaine purchases.

In addition, the complaint states that Fields purchased the First World Bank in the Cayman Islands “to launder money for his many drug trafficking associates.”

“Most of the millions of dollars in profit acquired by William Weitz Shaffer and Christopher Shaffer in the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s was laundered by Terry Fields,” the complaint adds. “Although the Shaffer organization laundered the majority of its own money by 1986, Terry Fields continued to manage certain investments for the Shaffers and other major drug traffickers.”

Among the accusations leveled against Fields is that he established three dummy corporations with Swiss bank accounts for William Shaffer. According to the government, those corporations were used to funnel payments to Vietnamese officials who assisted the Shaffer smuggling organization by giving it access to Ho Chi Minh Harbor in Vietnam.

Tuesday, Fields described the accusations against him as “totally ridiculous and ludicrous.” He declined further comment.

None of the charges against Fields have been proved. In fact, Fields has not formally been charged with any of those offenses and Tuesday’s action was only taken against his house, not against him personally.

Under federal law, agents can seize property that a judge believes probably has been purchased with the proceeds of a drug sale. The government must then prove its case in a civil trial, but it does not need to file criminal charges against the owner. To win a civil trial, the government need only show that the preponderance of the evidence favors its case.

Until the case involving Fields’ house is resolved, the government owns the property. That means that if Fields and his family want to stay in the Malibu home, they must begin making their payments to the government and must agree to keep the property in its current condition while they live there.

Neither DEA agents nor a representative of the U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle, where the Shaffer associates have been prosecuted, would comment on the likelihood of Fields being indicted.

Barry Tarlow, a Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer, called the decision to seize Fields’ home without arresting or indicting him “very unusual” and said it reinforced some of his concerns about the seizure laws.

“I’m troubled by a number of aspects of asset forfeiture,” Tarlow said. In particular, he said that the law gives authorities the power to seize money and other assets before ever finding a defendant guilty of a crime.

Those concerns were echoed by other lawyers.

“They do this because it’s easier,” said Melissa K. Nappan, legislative advocate for the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice.

Federal officials, however, say that the seizure laws are a crucial tool in the war on drugs.

“Congress passed these forfeiture laws with the intent to make drug trafficking less profitable and more risky,” Special Agent John Zienter, who heads the Los Angeles office of the DEA, said in a statement. “It is the DEA’s intention to ensure that no one permanently benefits financially from illegal drug dealing. This includes drug profiteers who would never possess or use drugs, but who eagerly possess and use drug money.”