Forfeiture Endangers American Rights

Forfeiture Victim Stories




An American
Gulag

The story of Russian immigrant/inventor Sam Zhadanov, who went to prison and lost his assets for manufacturing plastic vials that could be used as drug containers.


January 2, 1996
SUMMARY OF FACTS
by Sam Zhadanov

My name is Sam Zhadanov. I am 69 years old. I am not a criminal. I am a professional engineer/inventor.

For 22 years in the United States I worked my way up from a machinist to chief engineer to the head of my own manufacturing company. Hundreds of thousands of people today benefit from my inventions in the medical device and consumer product fields. My recently developed medical devices were on the brink of becoming new life saving products in the fight against AIDS.

All of that work has been destoryed. People that were employed at my business were thrown on the street. Tools of my trade, my equipment, materials, facilities, bank accounts, as well as all of my family's real estate property and lifetime savings, even savings of my 89 year old mother...everything that was earned in a lifelong struggle of hard labor was confiscated by the United States Government.

My ideas, my patents, my mind, my productive energy were put away, hidden behind prison walls. Prosecutors have demostrated to me how a family or ordinary engineers, defenseless people without political connections or teams of lawyers can be crushed and erased by the might of the United States Government.

The "Crime" that was assigned to me was that I manufactured small plastic containers. In 1991 I was approached by two businessmen who brought me a product sample of a small plastic perfume container and told me that I would get the manufacturing contract if the price was right. I developed the technology that enabled us to meet the low cost requirements and I received the job. My customers were selling this product through retail variety stores. As they informed me a year to a year and half later, these plastic containers became popular with store customers to illegal drugs.

Almost from the beginning of this job, government agents placed my factory under surveillance. They parked daily across the street and observed through open building gates how small plastic bottles came out of the machine. For months they watched, while millions of containers were being manufactured, picked up by the customer and sold to the retail system, to be ultimately filled with drugs.

Factory gates were always open allowing unobstructed view of the manufacturing process from the street. It was obvious to agents that people inside are not aware of any illegal nature of their activity, or the illegal use of their product. Yet their plan was not to interrupt. It is unconscionable to imagine that public officials who's job is crime prevention would not alarm the unsuspecting manufacturer.

Yet instead of preventing the crime, their plan was to create the crime and to make it flourish! As case documents show, this case was carefully planted and seeded by Philadelphia US Attorney's office for a period of two years at the cost of millions of taxpayer dollars.

Even when my customers started getting doubts about the legal nature of their product and abandoned its manufacturing and distribution, they were convinced by the planted government informant to renew production and that the product was perfectly legal. This conversation is recorded on tape!

My customers did not share their concerns with me, knowing that I would immedately stop the manufacture of their product. However, changes in their behavior started worrying me. Even though dozens if not hundreds of general retail stores continued to openly carry this product, I decided to be sure, just in case.

I brought samples of the product to my attorney, described my concerns and asked for a legal opinion. The legal opinion letter and verbal assurance made it clear that I had nothing to worry about. As I recently found out, even the Congressional definition of Drug Paraphernalia does not include packaging materials or plastic containers. Federal Appeals Courts have ruled repeatedly that manufacturing of items like "crack vials"are perfectly legal.

This information gave me a new understanding of what was done to me and my family: US Attorneys office fabricated a crack vial case and decided to turn it into a major drug conspiracy. I was chosen to take the fall knowing that manufacturing of plastic containers is not a crime, they decided to charged me with the drug conspiracy to distribute 10 tons of crack cocaine.

Since my factory, over a period of 3 years, prouduced plastic containers with a total volume capable of containing 10 tons of crack powder, I would be guilty of conspiracy to distribute 10 tons of crack, punishable by 10 years to life.

Payments received for my work constituted money laundering punishable by up to 20 years of imprisonment.

From a plastic manufacturer contracted to make plastic products, they've turned me into a drug dealer.

Under threats against members of my family, with no money to fight, after seizing every penny I had and destorying my business by scaring away all my customers, Federal proscecutors started pressuring me to give up fighting and plead guilty in exchange for a very light sentence and an opportunity to save my business. If I didn't agree, they threatened to put me in jail the rest of my life and go after the rest of my family.

According to my lawyer, I had no resources to mount a successful defense. I did not know at the time that my lawyer, recently a Federal prosecutor himself, had alternate reasons for closing this case this way. I later found out that while he continued to represent me, his legal fees were under the control of the prosecutors to be released under certain conditions.

Prosecutors and my attorney skillfully coerced me into signing the guilty plea agreement, which I never even read. I placed my life into the hands of people who betrayed my trust and used my lack of competence in these matters foreign to me. This happened one week before my trial was scheduled to start.

During sentencing, prosecutors attacked me with distortions and lies, but my lawyer abandoned me and did not rebut a single statement. I received a sentence of 5 years imprisonment to be followed by 5 years of supervised release.

I have been in prison for almost a year. but they have not broken my spirit. I know that I am innocent and I have not given up the hope that justice will prevail. I am now fighting for the chance to have a FAIR TRIAL. If such chance is given me and I cannot get a lawyer to defend me, I will represent myself. I intend to prove my innocence and expose the documented conspiracy, corruption and criminal conduct by Federal prosecutors.

22 years ago I brought my family to America from the despotic regime of the Soviet Union in search of Freedom and Justice. I am now prepared to die as a decendent in the America "Gulag" for that Freedom and Justice.


Sincerely,


Sam Zhadanov





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