"The law firms either had to change, suffering the loss of clients seeking a cozy relationship and the risk of exposure and the potential charge of corruption and loss of license." He said and then along comes the new breed of cat, recent grads from law school, fully aware and comfortable with the use of the product, and says hey, I have this client in the shipping business who deals in a high volume of cash and requires a middle-man to hold the cash until the product is delivered and accepted at the bonded warehouse." Hamilton said.
"So, the trade-off was hiding tobacco research for cash from an unknown product." I said.
"Yes, on the product side representing the shipping company, in this case Onassis who delivers the products from sugar; coffee; wheat; rice; tobacco, and fruit to ports in Florida, New Orleans, California, Maryland, New York and Canada to name a few," Hamilton said.
"Who is the client?" I asked
"P.T. Chou is the agent for the shipping company and they are represented by the law firm of Bright, Goldman & Associates who receive a telex from the shipper when the product has been offloaded by the union Stevedores into the bonded warehouse at the Port Of New Orleans. The buyer is notified and given legal notice that the product has been delivered with payment due upon the receipt via wire transfer to the escrow of the law firm with coordinates. When the firm receives the notice from the bank that the fed wire has been received, the law firm-sends a wire transfer to the bonded warehouse paying for the fee for storage. Hamilton explained to me.
"Now into the mix comes this legal hotshot named Flagler which Bright, Goldman & Associates hire away from the New York’s Attorney General, bright guy who has a boots on the ground, napalm and air cover attitude toward any legal issue. As the new leader of the Criminal Division and the generation of new clients, Flagler has a contact with a powerful agent for major shipping companies. Flagler must convince P.T. Chou that his firm can provide the legal expertise and the political muscle to keep the feds off the shippers back." Hamilton explained.
"I see the picture," I said. "Billions of dollars are coming into the law firm’s legal escrow account which is covered by the law as applied by Attorney/Client privilege. The fee for handling this business is one-half percent which amount to $ 5 million." Hamilton said.
"That is $5 million...per day...or with holidays a closure of business representing maybe ten days or a total of two-hundred-fifty-nine million US Dollars paid up front with overnight interest on the deposited cash." I said.
"Not a bad day’s work." Hamilton said.
“This methodology was a cost of doing business for Onassis, while providing safety and banking clearance for laundering billions of dollars, netting fees along the line at each point in the transit of the China White.”
P.T. Chou and Flagler did not know, nor would they have the need to know whose identity was being hidden by the code name,” Skipper.” For Chou’s part, his team delivered the product timely in Hong Kong under the cover of night and loaded the Skipper’s vessel with long balloon tubes into the concealed plastic tubes to keep the cocaine dry. On the other end of the trip when the ship arrived at the Port of New Orleans, the cocaine was removed from the safe-keeping pipes and delivered to Chou’s team for further delivery to networks who had wire transferred money for the product to the escrow account of Bright, Goldman & Associates.
At the other end of the transaction, Flagler’s associates checked the communications to verify that the products were delivered to the right party and the correct time and then the bank completed the wire transfers to Chou, through the Skipper’s attorneys and the firm kept the balance.”Hamilton said.
“These significant fees paying for homes, luxury automobiles, high end universities or prep-schools on the eastern seaboard, vacations to Hawaii and to European destinations and into Asia.” I said.
“Of course they did not know they were peas under the pod in a shell game of the illegal transit of the China White with the Skipper pushing them here and there, exposing Chou to a life behind bars if one of the crew got upset and decided to snitch on the operation and the scheme to hide the cocaine within the mechanicals of the ship. Their lives as nebulous as the human waste flushed from the bilge of the ship.
Chapter XIII
HE KNEW THE FUNDS WERE ILLEGAL
It said I was guilty of ordering thirty-nine checks from my trust in an amount in excess of five thousand dollars to be transferred across the state line…and here comes the zinger that every member of the Chamber of Commerce should pay attention to because the federal indictment which sent me to prison said that “I knew the funds were illegal.” So the government said in effect, that they were capable of reading my mind since I was never asked by either the FBI or the federal prosecutor, The Honorable James Lesousky.”
“Later after I was found guilty by a jury of my peers consisting of eleven (11) women and one (1) elderly black man who slept through-out the trial, the Court of Appeals remanded the case back to the Western District of Kentucky stating that nine (9) of the counts in the indictment were illegal and had it not been for the failure of my lawyers to specify as to Double Indemnity the case would have been thrown out.
Naturally you take what you get and the prospect that one-third of the sentence would be reduced by a district court judge who would have no way of altering the language handed down by this higher court.
I had much to learn as related to me by an old inmate at Marion Federal Prison who informed me that my sentence was to run concurrently on each of the bogus counts as a result of the multiplicous stacking of charges for the same identical statute.
At the trial I still did not ‘get it’…as a first timer, I was a babe in the woods, picked up at the camp by two armed guards in an old van at 6:30am, cuffed hand and feet with five other inmates, we made the four hour trip from Marion to Louisville in record time of Seventeen (17) hours without food, water or toilet break. Obviously, all the inmates pissed their pants, making the old van a randy place.
Who was not a victim at all but was a man whom the prosecutor had solicited to commit perjury in the hopes that he would get his money back which had been lost in another transaction and those funds stolen by international terrorist as defined by a French court in Nice. Am I correct so far?" Hamilton asked.
"Brilliant counselor, so the judge says to me I know that you are expecting a sentence reduction of twenty-three months and given the time you have spent in prison you would be due a get out of jail pass. "Here it comes I thought" But I have seen no change in your attitude, no remorse, no apologies for what you did to the lives of these victims and you have made only token payments to court cost and restitution, so I am not going to give you any reduction in time, instead I am going to give you a cash settlement in the amount of Fifty-four cents (54) per day for those twenty-two months and we will apply that cash first to court cost and then to restitution...of course I was stunned and my attorney appeared to want to leave...he said nothing...and I raised my hand...the judge acknowledged me and I said, Your honor I have been a model prisoner, have taken every course offered by the BOP, 1 have worked for nearly nothing and was nearly killed at Manchester I have been found guilty for something I did not do and the Court of Appeals has agreed that fully one-third of the charges are illegal and I ask this court to abide by the law and grant the sentence reduction.
Judge Heyburn denied the request and left the court."
"So you were devastated." Hamilton asked.
"Beyond words...I have never been so profoundly impacted by the cruelty of one human to another and in a way for the first time in my life I felt the pain which so many slaves felt by evil owners, impacting the mental well being, especially in the event of a family separation...after another three weeks in the county jail I was loaded on Con-Air and shipped to Oklahoma...and from there to Leavenworth." I said.
"Where was the prosecutor, sworn to uphold the law, broken by the cozy relationship between the client and Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, two federal judges, a governor and Lt. Governor on the mast head of the firm." The old man asked no one in particular.