SAN DIEGO -- A prominent San Diego Democrat was arrested Friday by FBI agents on charges that he agreed to launder more than $1 million he believed came from South American cocaine dealers, an FBI spokesman announced.
Richard T. Silberman, the husband of San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair Susan Golding, was arrested following a 2-year investigation which turned up evidence linking him to organized crime in Chicago, special agent Thomas Hughes told reporters Friday.
Silberman, a former state Secretary of Business and Transportation, and three other suspects were allegedly involved in 'efforts of the Chicago La Cosa Nostra family to gain control and exert influence over certain criminal activities in Nevada and Southern California,' said Hughes.
Silberman, who co-founded the Jack-in-the-Box fast-food chain with Robert Peterson, the husband of Mayor Maureen O'Connor, was arrested while attempting to complete the latest in a series of money-laundering transactions with an undercover FBI agent, said Hughes.
'He offered to provide a money-laundering service and that's ultimately what he did,' said Hughes.
The other men caught along with Silberman in the FBI sting operation and arrested Friday were Chris George Poulos, known around San Diego as Chris Petty, and two Los Angeles men, Jack N. Myers and Darryl Nakatsuka.
Silberman and Petty were booked into the Metropolitan Correction Center and were expected to be arraigned early next week, said Hughes.
A spokesman for Golding, a rising political star in California who reportedly had been considering a bid for lieutenant governor, said she had been out of town since the death of her mother two days ago and would not be available for comment.
A Republican, Golding campaigned for George Bush in the 1988 presidential election while her husband, a close ally of former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, worked as a fund-raiser for Michael Dukakis. Golding and Silberman married in 1984.
Both Peterson and O'Connor late Friday declined to comment on Silberman's arrest.
Along with the arrests of the four men, FBI agents with search warrants Fridaycollected evidence at the downtown headquarters of YUBA Natural Resources, Inc., which is owned by Silberman, and at Petty's San Diego residence.
Hughes said the massive FBI sting included the first-ever use of a landmark 'roving tap' telephone surveillance measure, enacted by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which allowed investigators to monitor conversations by targets of criminal investigations made on any telephone.
The sting apparently had centered on alleged criminal activities by Petty, 62, and netted Silberman almost by accident.
The wealthy 59-year-old Democrat allegedly 'sought out Chris Petty, who ultimately introduced (him) to an FBI undercover agent who had infiltrated Petty's operation as a money-launderer for Colombian cocaine drug traffickers,' said Hughes.
Silberman began by 'accepting and laundering $300,000 in a test amount' and was in the process of laundering $1.1 million from the undercover agent when he was arrested, said Hughes.
Silberman first emerged as a political and financial figure when Peterson adopted him as a protege in 1963.
The two men sold Jack-in-the-Box to Ralston-Purina for $58 million and later acquired Southern California First Bank, which they later sold to the Bank of Tokyo.
In October 1987, Peterson, ailing with leukemia, sold his interest in YUBA, Silberman's Northern California gold and silica company, and the two men, whose wives are long-time political rivals, reportedly severed ties.