DATE: Thursday, April 10, 1997              TAG: 9704100378

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS,STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   99 lines

COURT PAPERS OFFER DETAIL ON JEWISH MOTHER RAIDS THE IRS AND ABC LIST RESULTS OF THEIR RAIDS.

Agents who raided the Jewish Mother restaurant and the homes of the owner and manager in 1994 expected to find a huge stash of illegal drugs and millions of dollars in unreported income.

Instead, according to court documents released Wednesday, the federal and state agents found small amounts of marijuana, a bottle of illegally obtained Valium and evidence of about $10,000 to $20,000 a year in unreported income.

But the documents do not explain why criminal charges were never filed. One document indicates only that the tax charges could not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

On Wednesday, for the first time, federal tax agents and state liquor agents filed court documents showing the results of their controversial raids on the popular Oceanfront restaurant and three other sites.

Until now, the agents could not comment on what they found. Federal and state laws forbid tax and liquor agents from discussing criminal investigations. The only public evidence was the fact that no criminal cases were ever brought.

On Wednesday, however, a federal judge unsealed one document and allowed others to be filed - documents that lay out the results of the investigation.

The papers show that some minor drug and tax violations were found, but nothing like the major money laundering, drug and tax-fraud scheme that agents said they expected in a pre-search affidavit.

An attorney for the Jewish Mother, Robert J. Haddad, said Wednesday that his clients deny any drugs were found.

``My guys tell me it is not true, that they (agents) did not get drugs,'' Haddad said. ``If they found a large quantity of marijuana, I refuse to believe they wouldn't have done something about it - pressed charges or used it as leverage.''

The raids are the subject of a $20 million federal lawsuit against 10 Internal Revenue Service agents and 13 Alcoholic Beverage Control agents.

The raids on April 2, 1994, included drug-sniffing dogs and rifle-toting agents who broke up a teen-age girl's slumber party and rousted one man from the shower at gunpoint.

Jewish Mother co-owners John Colaprete and Ted Bonk and former manager Scotty Miller filed the suit, saying the raids were illegal and excessive. The IRS and the ABC deny this.

On Wednesday, after a hearing in Norfolk's federal court, Judge J. Calvitt Clarke Jr. unsealed a two-page fact summary from the IRS. Later in the day, the IRS filed other papers detailing the raids' results.

In one document, IRS Agent Arlene T. Campsen said she found in Miller's house an envelope with ``a small amount of what appeared to be marijuana'' and a bottle of Valium pills that were not obtained by prescription.

In another document, IRS Agent Carol Willman said she found in Colaprete's house ``a small amount of marijuana.'' She said the agency did not pursue this because ``it did not relate to the tax charge.''

Willman also said in court papers that seized records showed the restaurant did not report about $10,000 to $20,000 a year in income, some of it from cover charges.

Criminal charges were not pursued ``because of the difficulty of proving the precise amount . . . beyond a reasonable doubt,'' Willman said in the papers.

The day before the raids, Willman spelled out what she expected to find in a federal court affidavit, used to obtain the search warrants.

In the affidavit, Willman said an informant - a former bookkeeper - told her and other agents that the Jewish Mother was laundering millions of dollars in drug proceeds.

The bookkeeper described an enormous quantity of what appeared to be cocaine stacked 5 feet tall, 12 feet long and 3 feet wide in a restaurant office. The bookkeeper also said an owner and manager had threatened to kill her and her toddler.

The bookkeeper, Deborah A. Shofner, later pleaded guilty to embezzling about $30,000 from the restaurant. The Jewish Mother owners and manager say she was a disgruntled ex-employee and the IRS and ABC should never have believed her.

The new documents emerged Wednesday after an unusual hearing in federal court.

In that hearing, the IRS asked Judge Clarke to stop the Jewish Mother's owners and lawyers from talking to the press about the raids. The IRS said publicity would prevent the agency from a getting a fair jury trial in the civil case.

Clarke then scolded Haddad, the Jewish Mother's attorney, for letting his clients talk to the press while the case is pending. The Jewish Mother story has appeared in The Virginian-Pilot, PortFolio magazine, Money magazine and CBS News and will appear on NBC News' Dateline Sunday at 7 p.m.

``Your people are the ones who brought this suit . . .,'' Clarke told Haddad. ``I'm very disappointed that you, as an officer of this court, would allow them to talk with the press. . . . Why don't they reserve their talk until they get into the courtroom?''

The judge did not impose a gag order, though. That would be precluded by the First Amendment, he ruled.

Instead, Clarke unsealed one IRS document laying out some facts of the case, in an effort to balance publicity by the Jewish Mother. He also let the IRS and the ABC publicly file other papers that normally would be kept private among the lawyers until trial.

The judge said he was very unhappy at recent publicity about the case. That will only make it harder to find an impartial jury, he said.

``I thought you learned better than that in law school,'' Clarke scolded Haddad.

The trial was scheduled to start this week, but has been delayed several months while a pretrial issue is on appeal.

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