Summer of 1994. Los Angeles. Sanwa Bank California, 601 South Figueroa, Ninth Floor. I was 24 years old, and it was the first time someone had ever offered me a bribe.

A fellow who I will call Mr. X was trying to buy a real-estate secured promissory note (a "note") from the bank. This is fairly typical when banks have problem loans...the bank sells the note, and the buyer can then strike a new deal with the borrower, or foreclose on the property.

I had already struck a deal with Mr. X; only the payment remained. I was working in "Special Assets" (the problem loan department), and the promissory note Mr. X was buying was in my portfolio.

Of the $640,000 purchase price, Mr. X wanted to pay $160,000 of it cash. He brought the currency to the bank, and I was more than a little taken aback. I informed Mr. X that we would be complying with federal regulations to report all cash transactions in excess of $10,000. He got very agitated and pulled a fat wad of hundreds from the $160,000. He said, "Let's not report this...Benjamin says you can keep your mouth shut."

I brushed him off as if he was kidding, and rode the elevator with him down to the ground floor branch where I insisted that he fill out the forms. He almost decided to come back with a check, but that would have delayed the closing, so he went ahead with the form.

Several weeks later, I got a call from someone who was with a joint FBI-ATF task force (not sure why ATF was involved, but there you have it) looking into financial crimes...and could I describe the transaction with Mr. X for them. A third member of the task force was a local arson investigator. It turned out that Mr. X was accused of burning down the very small motel that secured the note that I had recently sold him.

It was an insurance scam that Mr. X had executed several times before including in other states, and the feds were hot on his trail. The arson investigator said that the fire at the small (closed) motel was "extremely aggressive arson"...gasoline-soaked sheets were tied together and set ablaze. I heard that at least one vagrant died in the fire.

Much later, I was called to testify at Mr. X's trial. When I was testifying, he stared at me with an intense cold fury and looked like he was ready to kill me on the spot with his bare hands. I later heard he was found guilty and hopefully he is still in jail.

That was an absurdly long preamble for the main point today, which I will try to make briefly: How can elected representatives say with a straight face that transactions involving large amounts of cash were on the up-and-up? I find it insulting when folks try to explain that large cash transactions were totally legitimate.

I know about the presumption of innocence, but I don't know if I can make that presumption for certain folks... like Rep. William Jefferson (D-Louisiana), in whose freezer the FBI found $90,000 in cash. Or Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Arizona) whose offices were just raided by the FBI in April, and who received $200,000 in cash from a former business partner after the completion of a land transaction involving a piece property that was to be part of a proposed government land exchange bill.

The denials of elected officials who have been inolved with large cash transactions are typically pathetic. The very fact that they did transactions involving such large sums of currency gives me 98% confidence that the transaction was illegitimate and a betrayal of public trust. Despicable.