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Sunday, May 19, 2002

By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

SOMERSET, Pa. -- The case almost begs for the presence of Karl Malden, pitching the blessings of traveler's checks.

The setup: You're traveling the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Somerset when a state trooper pulls you over for speeding, then, after five hours of questioning, lets you go -- minus the $310,020 you had stuffed in a pair of duffel bags in the trunk.

Enter pitch man Malden with his trademark, "What will you do? What will you do?"

If you're Dien Vy Phung, an auto bumper assembly line supervisor from Ontario, you beeline to Commonwealth Court, say you're guilty of nothing and demand that police return the money -- the largest cash seizure ever on that stretch of turnpike, still locked away 6 1/2 weeks later.

If you're law enforcement, you object. You say that, with drug residue on the money, that much cash being toted in a car trunk and Phung fumbling for explanations, things are fishy enough that you just know he was up to no good.

The problem, you concede, is that you don't know exactly what no good he was up to. But you charge that the cash is linked to crime and ask that Phung -- a man with a clean criminal record, his attorney said -- be parted permanently from his money.

"The items seized and the circumstances of this case indicate that Phung is involved in illegal drug activities," Karyn White, state deputy attorney general in her department's asset forfeiture and money laundering section, wrote in a petition filed last week in Somerset County Common Pleas Court.

"We're working on trying to figure out this whole thing," said Sgt. Anthony DeLuca, commander of the state police turnpike barracks at Somerset. "Is this drug trafficking? Is this a money-laundering scheme? It very well could be. It just doesn't add up."

To date, investigators have convinced Somerset County Judge John Cascio that there's reason to hold the money, sparking Phung's coming plea to Commonwealth Court.

The episode began about 11 a.m. April 4, when Phung, driving alone toward Pittsburgh with a suspended license and an overdue rental car, sped through a 55-mph zone at 75 mph, DeLuca said.

"The trooper walks up to the car and, all of a sudden, Mr. Phung starts sweating," DeLuca said.

Sweating is within the law. But by police account, things for Phung went downhill from there and bottomed out when a drug dog, called in when Phung consented to a search, began sniffing hard at the cash-filled duffel bags.

"The troopers had asked if he had weapons, drugs or cash in the vehicle, and he had said, 'No,' " said Sean Connolly, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office.

On second thought, DeLuca said, Phung said he was packing money culled from friends to buy a Pittsburgh-area nail salon.

That's a story that Phung's attorney, Matthew Zatko of Somerset, seconds. But Zatko said he wouldn't offer names or identify the business until he has to muscle up his case in court.

"But he says, 'I'm buying this nail salon,' and he doesn't know the guy's first name. He says he was just coming from visiting his girlfriend in New Jersey. ... but he doesn't know her last name," DeLuca said.

And the car -- rented near Boston, two days overdue and to be driven only in Massachusetts -- was signed out to another man whom federal authorities identified as a heroin trafficker, the trooper said.

While police figure they have enough evidence to hold Phung's money, though, they didn't see enough evidence to hold Phung.

After five hours of questioning -- at one point, with Phung so rattled that he had a burning cigarette in his car ashtray and another in his mouth -- police gave him a bus ticket back to Jersey City, N.J., and his girlfriend.

It was another stop in an odyssey that investigators say began four days earlier, when Phung crossed into the United States, traveled to Boston, then New Jersey and, finally, on the turnpike through Somerset.

In the aftermath, investigators used a test known as an ion scan to hunt drug residue on the money. They found eight of nine groups of bills had traces of cocaine, heroin, the active ingredient in marijuana and a chemical used in cutting cocaine.

All were at levels that DeLuca said were four to five times what they'd expect from casual contact.

"The ion scan is the main physical evidence," Connolly said.

Zatko scoffs.

"You ask the troopers how much money had drug traces. The answer is, 'I don't know,' " he said. "Tell me who put the drugs on the money. They say, 'I don't know.' Tell me how it got on the money. 'I don't know.' "

By Zatko's reckoning, police see Phung as a piece without a puzzle.

"I'm not going to call them bad cops, but what should have been done is further surveillance, not seizure. Put a tail on him. But don't just grab the money," he said.

"I asked an FBI agent why no arrest was made, and he said because no crime was committed."

Without a crime, there's no criminal activity to which to tie the cash, Zatko said.

In a 1999 state Supreme Court case, justices ordered police to return $2,650 seized from a Philadelphia man, money discovered in his car during a traffic stop.

Justices said police suspicions might have been stoked by the large amount of cash and the fact that petitioner Efraim Fontanez had a drug history. But they noted that no officers actually saw a drug deal and concluded, "At most, these suspicions merited further investigation or surveillance."

In the current case, Phung is back in Ontario but could not be located for comment.

Zatko is preparing the Commonwealth Court case.

State police are still digging into the case, working with federal agents and even investigators in Canada.

"We're looking at the bigger picture," DeLuca said. "There's something that's not right about this, and we'll hold onto the money until we find everything is on the up and up."