SEATTLE — Lawyer A. Mark Vanderveen, who received a six-month sentence for failing to report taking drug money from a client, thought he might spend his last day of home confinement going for a bicycle ride with his family.
He called the U.S. Probation Office on Sept. 21 to ask for permission to cut off his electronic monitoring bracelet six hours early, and was promptly denied. Then, like a “petulant teenager,” according to U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez, he cut it off anyway.
On Nov. 13, his behavior earned him an extra six days in prison – one for each hour – and an extra month of home confinement. According to his lawyer, Robert Chadwell, Vanderveen never even went on the bike ride.
“I can’t really explain it,” Chadwell said. “It was an incredibly stupid thing for him to do.”
Vanderveen, of Lake Forest Park, ran afoul of the law when he didn’t report accepting $20,000 in cash from another lawyer, James L. White, to represent a suspected drug runner. Vanderveen pleaded guilty last year, admitting he failed to report the money to the IRS. He received three months in prison and three months of home confinement.
White, who was Edmonds Municipal Court judge at the time, admitted accepting $250,000 in tainted money from a drug trafficker, was sentenced to a year and a half in prison. White and Vanderveen also admitted that they tailed Vanderveen’s client to see if he was acting as a federal informant. Vanderveen’s law license has been suspended.
At his sentencing in December 2005, Vanderveen apologized for assisting drug traffickers.
“It is my responsibility to analyze the situation carefully,” Vanderveen said at the sentencing. “I simply don’t have the words to tell you how deeply sorry I am for not having done so.”
Both Vanderveen and White admitted aiding members of a drug ring that smuggled large amounts of cocaine, cash and potent “B.C. Bud” marijuana across the U.S.-Canada border.
The trouble began after federal agents in February stopped a 372-pound cocaine shipment as it was being smuggled along U.S. 2 in Monroe.
Before the government intervened, the lawyers hid dirty money, conducted covert surveillance and helped search for missing marijuana valued at $1 million.
At the December sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Friedman quoted from court papers filed by White’s attorney, Mark Mestel, in which White was described as having become “intoxicated by the allure of piles of currency.”
Vanderveen willingly assisted White, including actions that put one of Vanderveen’s clients – someone who at the time was secretly working with federal agents – at risk of discovery and possibly death, Friedman said.
“What (Vanderveen) needed to do was say ‘No,’ and it is that repeated failure that brought him to where he is today,” the prosecutor said in December.
Vanderveen’s attorney, Robert Chadwell of Seattle, asked for lieniency and pointed to Vanderveen’s tax records, showing the lawyer had consistently donated large amounts of money to charity – a full third of what he earned in 2004, for example.
Judge Martinez said he had considered sending a message by issuing even harsher sentences.
The judge said he was most offended by how White made sure that some of the dirty money reached Vanderveen. White left the cash for his accomplice in a brown paper bag on the judge’s chair in the Edmonds courthouse.
However, Martinez decided to stay within federal sentencing guidelines.
At the Nov. 13 hearing for cutting off his security bracelet, Chadwell said that Vanderveen had planned to go on the bike ride on Sept. 23, he came down with the flu. Nevertheless, he cut off his monitoring bracelet at 11 a.m. – six hours before the term ended. Vanderveen claimed he spent the day in bed as his wife drove their son to soccer.
Scott North, a reporter with The Herald in Everett, contributed to this story.
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