FBI case suspect faces new charges

Wednesday, July 18, 2001 | 10:46 a.m.

A Las Vegas man who has been indicted in a high-profile FBI secrets-for-sale scandal now is charged in a $10 million stock securities scheme.

Robert Potter, 53, currently in custody in New York with no bail in a case where Las Vegas FBI files allegedly were sold for thousands of dollars to crime figures, was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Las Vegas.

The five-count indictment says Potter, Peter Berney and Rebecca Berney laundered money and engaged in "transactions of property derived from specified unlawful activity" in a fraudulent stock securities operation.

The stolen documents and stock fraud cases are unrelated, a spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division said, noting it took two years to bring charges against Potter.

Potter was charged in New York last month with buying top-secret FBI information from Las Vegas private detective Mike Levin, a former FBI agent who is cooperating in the secrets-for-sale probe.

Levin, who also was charged in the case, told FBI agents he obtained the confidential documents from James J. Hill, a security analyst at the bureau's Las Vegas field office, and others in law enforcement. FBI agents arrested both Levin and Hill on June 14.

Potter was among six people charged in New York with buying FBI information from Levin.

Tuesday's indictment adds Potter's name to an August 1999 indictment against the Berneys, who are scheduled to enter a plea during an arraignment before U.S. Magistrate Lawrence Leavitt at 8:30 a.m. on July 27. Potter's arraignment will be set at his yet-to-be-scheduled initial appearance in Las Vegas.

Other indictments against Peter Berney and Potter, stemming from the same stock transactions in Las Vegas, were handed down in New York in October 1999.

Peter Berney, 54, was arrested in Zurich, Switzerland, in February 2000, and was extradited to the United States 10 months later. He was released from the North Las Vegas Detention Center on March 15 and is under house arrest at his Las Vegas home.

Rebecca Berney, Peter's estranged wife, pleaded innocent on the original indictment. Her whereabouts were not immediately known. Her attorney Richard Wright is out of town, his office said.

The indictment alleges that the defendants conspired to use personal, trust and corporate bank accounts to hide proceeds from the fraudulent sales of securities to the public between January 1993 through Aug. 17, 1999.

The indictment alleges: "Robert Potter and other conspirators would create shell corporations ... then arranged for the shells to be merged with private companies." The conspirators "would then sell securities they held without disclosing the hidden control of the ... stock," the indictment says.

The indictment also alleges that co-conspirators "subverted the legitimate operation of certain brokerage firms." They would call potential customers "and would knowingly make false representation of the values ... of the securities."

The indictment also alleges Potter transferred more than $56,000 in "funds representing the proceeds of the fraudulent sales of securities" from brokerage accounts in Las Vegas and Salt Lake City to a bank account.

The government is seeking forfeiture of $2.58 million from seized accounts of the Berneys and Potter; five parcels of local property including four vacant lots; seven cars including a 1999 Bentley and two 1990s Mercedes Benzes and multiple shares of 32 legitimate securities.