Cocaine money-launderer gets 1 day in jail

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A Maryland man who laundered money for the supplier of the Pittsburgh region’s largest cocaine ring but cooperated with authorities in a complex investigation will spend a day in jail and a year on home confinement.

U.S. District Judge David Cercone on Thursday ordered Howard Weinberg, 67, owner of a lighting company near Baltimore and a leader in the Jewish community there, to spend a day in the custody of federal marshals in Pittsburgh before he can go home to Maryland.

Weinberg also helped authorities investigate a bribery scheme involving Google and a wealthy Dutch businessman.

Weinberg and his lawyer declined to comment after the hearing, as did the U.S. attorney’s office.

Weinberg cooperated with Pittsburgh IRS agents, U.S. Homeland Security and Dutch authorities investigating Rudy Stroink, one of the richest men in the Netherlands, and Simon Tusha, a former Google executive in Maryland.

Mr. Stroink, former head of TCN Group and something of a tech media star in his home country, is accused of paying 1.7 million euros to Mr. Tusha, who was in charge of setting up Google data centers around the world.

Mr. Stroink paid the bribes from 2008 to 2010 in an effort to secure a Google center in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, according to investigators.

Mr. Tusha pleaded guilty in Pittsburgh in 2016 to accepting the bribes and is also cooperating against Mr. Stroink.

He admitted that he received some $3.2 million from TCN and another company in the United Kingdom, Evolved IT, that was negotiating contracts for data centers and hid the money in a series of shell corporations.

The bribe money ended up in Mr. Tusha’s PNC account in Pittsburgh.

Weinberg’s role, according to court records, was to set up bank accounts for Mr. Tusha’s companies for a share of the money.

At Mr. Tusha’s plea hearing in May 2016, assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Wilson said Weinberg set up a company, M.V. Business in Dominica, and wired $300,000 from its Bank of America account to Mr. Tusha’s PNC account in Pittsburgh. Weinberg later transferred another $315,000 from MV’s Bank of Bermuda account to the PNC account, Mr. Wilson said.

He said the shell companies were established to disguise the source of money flowing into Mr. Tusha’s accounts, some of which he used to buy a big house in Maryland.

Mr. Tusha and Weinberg later had a falling out over how to split the bribe money from TCN, Mr. Wilson said, after which Mr. Tusha switched to another conspirator.

The whole scheme was uncovered during the investigation of a Californiato-Pittsburgh drug ring operated by Russell Spence of Coraopolis.

He is serving 20 years for shipping 2 tons of cocaine into Western Pennsylvania, an amount of the drug that in terms of volume makes his ring the largest in this district’s history.

Spence was indicted here in 2009 with many others, including the former athletic director at Duquesne High School and a Washington, D.C., police officer, Jared Weinberg, who is Howard Weinberg’s son.

Father and son were charged in that case with laundering drug money for Damon Collins, a drug dealer originally from Oakland, Calif., who supplied Spence.

Howard Weinberg got involved because he had known Collins’ father, a trolley operator, when they both lived in San Francisco and promised him he would take care of his son after he died.

When Collins was in Baltimore in 2005, he asked for that help in laundering his money.

Weinberg’s lawyer, Stephen Misko, said Weinberg bought cashier’s checks or sent wire transfers to Collins over a 4½-year period.

Initially, Weinberg thought Collins was in real estate, Mr. Misko said, and only later realized he was a criminal.

“Clearly, Mr. Weinberg made a very bad decision in laundering funds to Damon Collins, for which he is sincerely remorseful and embarrassed,” Mr. Misko wrote when Weinberg pleaded guilty in 2014.

In asking for leniency in court on Thursday, Mr. Misko also said Weinberg takes care of his elderly mother and has a host of health problems.

Mr. Stroink is set to go to trial in the Netherlands in September.

Mr. Tusha is awaiting sentencing in Pittsburgh and has indicated he is expecting a deal with the U.S. attorney’s office for his help.