If I had never been caught in the act, just how did I come to be arrested? Both counts were conspiracy charges, meaning that they had enough to satisfy the basic elements of the crime:

• Two or more persons conspired, or agreed, to commit certain crimes.
  

• That I knowingly and voluntarily joined the conspiracy.
  

• That a member of the conspiracy later did one or more overt acts, for the purpose of advancing or helping the conspiracy.

Being that I was advising a 200-man criminal organisation, the US Attorney was able to find a number of
minor individual participants, to whom they granted immunity, for the purpose of indicting the kingpins and their professional advisers. They also had two defendants, all former money laundering clients of mine, who had already been convicted of narcotics crimes.

These two gentlemen, who were looking at life sentences, were persuaded to give testimony against me. They would later reduce their possible life sentences to two years in Federal prison. But they still didn't have enough for a bulletproof case; there was no smoking gun, bales of cash or millions socked away in an offshore account, that had been seized. How would they get enough to indict me?

One of the kingpins had a premonition that, one day, a case would be filed against the organisation. Having a gift for languages, he moved to New York City, where he has lived in the 1960s, took a crash course in French, and moved to France, intending to evade US authorities.

Setting himself as a small-time book publisher in the south of France, he soon had a fiance, and a growing business, in which he  found refuge from his colourful past. An agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration stationed in France would later say that his accent and vocabulary were flawless.

Career criminals being creatures of habit, he was soon drawn into money laundering in Europe as an active player, and this was responsible for his arrest on charges unrelated to his US past. had he kept his nose clean, he might have eluded US law enforcement indefinitely, married, and ultimately acquired that precious French citizenship. France does not, as a rule, extradite its nationals to face criminal charges in other nations.

Whilst spending several months in a French jail, awaiting trial there, he decided to face the music in the US, rather than risk French justice. A six-footer, and a former itinerant ship's captain and drug runner, he nevertheless had a few ribs broken by some of his cell-mates. perhaps that is why he decided to cut his losses, and cooperate, and whose Grand Jury testimony incriminated yours truly.

The other blow was the disclosure by the United States Attorney that he intended to use Rule 404 evidence at my trial. Rule 404 of the Federal Rules of Evidence provides that the prosecutor may introduce at trial evidence of other, uncharged criminal conduct. After a decade of supporting narcotics trafficking organisations,  there were many, many other acts of money laundering that I had committed for other clients.

They planned to prejudice a jury against me by bringing in all my other criminal associations, and the  money laundering that I performed. Could I survive all this at trial?

Next Week: the case against me moves forward.