SEIZURE OF CASH SETS RECORD

If a Colby, Kan,. police officer hadn't confused the letters "K" and
"X" on a license plate last week, a suspected drug dealer might still
be alive and on the run.

But Cpl. Scott Sitton read the wrong letter, and the events that
followed led him to pull the car over. In short order, one of the two
men in the car killed himself with a gunshot to the head, and officers
found $3.77 million in cash in the car.

The cash seizure was by far the largest in state history.

Kansas authorities later learned that the dead man was being sought in
connection with drug trafficking and was linked to $5.99 million that
had been seized earlier that day at a storage locker in Fort Collins,
Colo.

It all began about 9 p.m. Jan. 14, when Sitton saw a driver trying to
maneuver a Ford Taurus into position for gas at a service station just
off the highway in Colby. The driver didn't seem familiar with the
car, so the officer radioed a dispatcher with the license plate number.

The license plate didn't go with the Taurus, which was rented, so the
officer drove by again to see whether he had misread it. He had-- the
plate was right--but the two men in the Taurus seemed nervous to see
the officer again.

"When he went by them the second time, they really gave him the old
rubberneck," Colby Police Chief Randall Jones said Friday.

The officer waited for the men to fill up and got behind them when
they pulled out of the gas station. The driver illegally passed
through the right-hand southbound lane and got into the left-hand
southbound lane to make aleft turn onto Interstate 70, Jones said.
Sitton turned on his flashing lights, and the driver pulled overon the
highway on-ramp.

The officer took a driver's license and car-rental agreement from
Justin E. De Busk, 26, of Katy, Texas. A dispatcher told Sitton that
the documents were valid and De Busk wasn't wanted.

But De Busk was shaking when Sitton returned the papers, Jones said,
so the officer asked the driver if he would answer a few more
questions. The driver said he was returning from a ski trip, but the
officer didn't see any skiing equipment.

Sitton asked if he could check the trunk, which De Busk opened from a
latch inside the car. Inside, the officer saw cardboard boxes and a
locked duffel bag that felt as if it held bricks. Sitton suspected
the bricks were packages of marijuana.

The officer called De Busk out of the car and asked him to open the
bag, but De Busk said it belonged to his passenger, Jones said. The
officer told De Busk to stand in front of the police car and then
called to the passenger, Robert Henry Golding, 43.

Golding came out but immediately grabbed something from his waistband,
Jones said. Sitton shoved Golding against the Taurus, and Golding
shot himself in the head, Jones said.

Sitton ran back to his car and shouted into his radio, "Shots fired!
Shots fired! The suspect shot himself in the head!" Then he pulled his
pistol on De Busk and ordered him to the ground until help arrived.

Golding was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Officers searched the car and found cellophane wrapped bricks of cash
in the duffel bag, six boxes and a trash bag. They also found dozens
of Social Security cards, birth certificates, identification cards and
driver's licenses, some blank and some with Golding's photo, police
said.

De Busk was booked into the Thomas County jail, charged with aiding a
felon.

His father, Fred De Busk of Huntington Beach, Calif., said Friday that
he doesn't know whether his son knew what he was hauling. He suspects
that Justin De Busk, who stands 6 feet 6 inches tall and weights about
240 pounds, was recruited to travel with Golding--who was about 5 feet
6 and less than 170 pounds--because of his stout build.

Justin De Busk worked selling spray-on pickup bed liners but
frequently made money dealing in various goods, his father said.

"He was always dabbling with something--buy something for 10 and sell
it for 20," Fred De Busk said. "But I never suspected an ything like
this."

Justin De Busk grew up in a large family and was raised as a good
Mormon, his father said.

"We realize that we can train our children, but we can't dictate their
lives," he said.

Earlier on the day of the traffic stop, Drug Enforcement
Administration officers opened a storage locker in Fort Collins,
Colo., and found an electronic money counter, a .40-caliber handgun
and stacks of money, mostly $20 bills. The total, nearly $6 million,
was linked to Golding, said U.S. Attorney Tom Strickland.

"He was looking at life in prison without the possibility of parole,"
Jones said.

The U.S. Marshals Service had been looking for Golding since 1994 for
a parole violation resulting from a tax fraud conviction.

He had spent time in federal penitentiaries, under his name and under
aliases, police said.

Colorado authorities had been investigating drug traffic in the state
for some time, Strickland said. They probably were closing in on
Golding, he said.

In addition to the cash seized in Colorado and Kansas, Strickland
said, authorities also seized $47,000 from a bank account in
Allentown, PA., and $5,000 from one in Des Moines, Iowa, in connection
with the Golding investigation.

Golding may have known that the $6 million was seized in Fort Collins
earlier on the day he shot himself, authorities said.

His girlfriend, Mitra Hagh, lived in a Denver condominium for which
she had paid $13,000 cash for a security deposit. She recently got in
trouble with customs agents in Blaine, Wash., when she tried to
declare $1,000 in ski equipment and clothes.

Told she had an exemption of only $400, Hagh began losing her story.
Suspicious agents searched her car, found $190,000 in cash and
arrested her for making a false statement.

Also in the car, agents found Canadian identification in the name of
Michael Connors and a business car for "A Storage Place" in Fort Collins.

An agent identified Golding as the man pictured on the Quebec driver's
license with the name Connors.

DEA agents searched the storage locker and found cash packed into 11
U-Haul boxes.

The cash seized in Kansas will be split among law enforcement agencies
that helped with the investigation and must be used for law
enforcement purposes that are not funded by the regular budgets,
Attorney General Carla Stovall said in a statement. The $3.77 million
seizure breaks the record set by a $813,786 cash seizure in 1995.