TIME RAN OUT FOR BIG-TIME TRAFFICKER

COLBY -- Robert Golding, or whoever he was pretending to be at any one time,
dealt in large amounts of marijuana, with sales probably amounting to $1
million to $2 million a month.

He made money transactions in such places as Luxembourg and Dubai under any
of 35 aliases he was known to use, court documents showed.

He had vanished between 1994, when he became wanted for a parole violation,
until last August, when he was caught delivering 212 pounds of marijuana to
a man in a hotel in Lakewood, Colo., according to an affidavit by an agent
of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The affidavit was released by the
U.S. attorney for Colorado.

Then Golding disappeared again after telling authorities he would act as an
informant and would keep in touch, according to the DEA agent.

Golding's world began to unravel when his girlfriend, Mitra Hagh, recently
tried to cross the U.S.-Canadian border at Blaine, Wash., with $190,000. It
ended Jan. 14 in the western Kansas town of Colby when a police officer
stopped his car for making an illegal U-turn. Golding stuck a gun in his
mouth and committed suicide.

Inside the car, police found more than $3 million in cash, marijuana, false
identification documents and blank birth certificates.

Earlier that day, DEA officers opened a storage locker in Fort Collins,
Colo., and found an electronic money counter, a .40-caliber handgun and
stacks of money, mostly in $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," Colby
Police Chief Randy Jones said. "Most (charges) deal with drugs and money
laundering."

Golding had been wanted by the U.S. Marshals Service since 1994 for a parole
violation resulting from a tax fraud conviction.

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

The case all turned on the girlfriend's stammering at the border, a business
card in her possession that led to the storage locker in Colorado, a wrong
turn on the highway and a suspicious policeman.

Colorado authorities had been investigating drug importation and
distribution in the state for some time, Strickland said. They probably were
closing in on Golding, but were perhaps disappointed that his suicide ended
their investigation before they were ready.

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

"The huge amount of cash seized is clear evidence of the scope of this major
marijuana distribution organization," Strickland said. "Seizing this much
money also underscores the (magnitude) of the profits that drug traffickers
can accumulate."

Golding may have known the authorities were getting close. He also may have
known that the $6 million had been seized in Fort Collins earlier on the day
he shot himself.

Hagh, who lived in a Denver condominium for which she had paid a security
deposit with $13,000 in cash, began to get in trouble with customs agents
when she tried to declare $1,000 in ski equipment and clothes.

Told she had an exemption of only $400, Hagh's story began to unravel.
Suspicious agents searched her car, found the large amount of cash and
arrested her for making a false statement.

Agents also found in the car Canadian identification in the name of Michael
Connors and a business card for "A Storage Place" in Fort Collins.

An agent identified the picture on the Quebec driver's license issued to
Connors as being Golding.

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

Golding, meanwhile, was traveling on Interstate 70 in western Kansas near
the Colby exit in a car driven by Justin DeBusk. Colby Cpl. Scott Sitton saw
the car make an illegal U-turn and pulled it over in the dark.

DeBusk told Sitton that the two, who were driving a rental car with Michigan
plates, were returning from a skiing trip to Colorado. Sitton didn't buy
that story because there was no ski equipment in the car.

DeBusk gave Sitton permission to search the car. Sitton ran his hands over a
duffel bag and noticed it was filled with brick-like objects that could be
packed marijuana.

He asked DeBusk to open a padlock on the bag, but DeBusk said it belonged to
Golding.

Sitton told DeBusk to stand by his patrol car, and he asked Golding to get
out of the car.

Golding reached for his waist and turned, and Sitton tried to force him
against the car.

A shot rang out and Golding went limp. He was dead at the hospital.