“Money laundering is my business on private contracts,” Demmler said. “It’s nobody’s business but mine.”

Note, the $3Billion dollar figure is just what they can prove!
This is BIGGER THAN ENRON!!! Who is following the real money? How much was given to HCA & Family?


Lance Poulsen allegedly offered a potential witness against him up to $2 million to change her testimony, a riveted jury heard Monday morning.

Backed up by secretly recorded tapes of their conversations, Sherry Gibson, a former executive vice president of National Century Financial Enterprises Inc., told jurors that her former boss used an intermediary to try to convince her to lie during Poulsen’s trial on fraud charges. Gibson is the government’s star witness in its case against Poulsen, the former CEO and part-owner of the Dublin-based firm.

Gibson worked her way up from receptionist to senior executive a National Century, becoming a linchpin in the nearly decade-long fraud the government has alleged went on at the company. She told a jury Monday that she participated in what was essentially a massive Ponzi scheme at the company. She pleaded guilty in 2003 to conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

“I pled guilty because I was guilty,” Gibson said. “... I entered a plea agreement to minimize my exposure to prison.”

Gibson spent three years in prison, repaid $420,000 to the government and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation into National Century.

While in prison, Gibson said Karl Demmler, a mutual friend of hers and Poulsen’s, asked her if she would be interested in recovering the money she had paid to the government. Gibson told the jury that she was more interested in moving on with her life.

“If there was a way to reclaim my assets without nullifying, voiding or in any way imperiling my plea agreement, that would be something to check out,” Gibson read from a Jan. 25, 2007, letter she wrote to Demmler. “I have no intention of starting a fight over my current sentence because the alternative is much worse.”

Thinking that the matter was dropped, Gibson told the jury she then met Demmler for dinner after she got out of prison. But Demmler brought up the subject again, she said. Demmler told her that Poulsen thought the government had given Gibson a “raw deal,” she said, and Poulsen wanted to make Gibson “whole.”

“I was somewhat taken aback that I had just been offered a bribe and changed the subject,” Gibson said.

Gibson said she told her attorney about the offer the next day. After a few days, Gibson made an agreement with the government to record any conversations she had with Demmler.

Prosecutors played for the jury the first conversation Gibson recorded between herself and Demmler.

“I told him you would want at least a million bucks,” the jury heard Demmler say. In that same conversation, Demmler also told Gibson that for a 10 percent fee, he would manage all aspects of the money exchange for her.

“Money laundering is my business on private contracts,” Demmler said. “It’s nobody’s business but mine.”

Between June and October 2007, Gibson said she met with Demmler eight times about a possible bribe, as well as receiving several voice messages from him. In each of the recorded conversations, Demmler told Gibson that he was in touch with Poulsen and attempting to work out payments for her.

In one recorded conversation, Demmler even played a voice message Poulsen had left him that Gibson alleged referred to the bribery attempt.

“There are some ways for our friend to recover our friend’s losses,” Poulsen said in the message he left with Demmler.

Under cross-examination, Gibson admitted to Poulsen’s attorney William Terpening that she never spoke with Poulsen directly. Gibson also said she never met with Pouslen or received any money from him.

Terpening also suggested that Demmler’s reliability was questionable by asking Gibson what she knew about his political views. Gibson admitted that Demmler had some “interesting” ideas, including that any federal government taxation is illegal.

When Terpening suggested that Gibson’s only contact with Poulsen in 2007 was through a “crazy” man, Gibson responded that her contact was through an “intermediary” that was well known to both her and Pouslen. She said she couldn’t comment on Demmler’s psychological health because she is not a doctor.

Both Demmler and Poulsen were found guilty in March by a separate jury of attempting to bribe Gibson.

Poulsen is standing trial in U.S. District Court in Columbus on charges he ran a fraud that resulted in as much as $2.84 billion in investor funds going missing after National Century collapsed into bankruptcy in 2002. Poulsen is accused of one count each of conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy, four counts of concealment of money laundering and six counts of securities fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Defense attorneys are expected to continue their cross examination of Gibson on Tuesday.