N.J. bizman's trial on sex charges opens

In March 2005, a U.S. customs agent inspected Anthony Mark Bianchi's luggage after an overseas trip to Moldova and found condoms, sexual lubricants, a children's game and a suspicious note.

Yesterday, during opening arguments in Bianchi's trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Levy read the note to the jury.

It said: "In the future, you can depend on me for anything that you may need. I have tried to teach you life's valuable lesson - the meaning of true friendship - compromise, trust and understanding.

"I wish you good things, only good things. Your friend always, All the best, Mark."

At the end of the note Bianchi had appended a smiley-face caricature.

Levy showed the note to jurors and said it illustrated how Bianchi ingratiated himself with boys from poor European countries whom he is accused of sexually abusing on overseas trips.

Bianchi, 44, of North Wildwood, a rich motel owner, is alleged to have traveled extensively to remote parts of Moldova, Romania and Cuba between 2003 and 2005 to have sex with young boys.

He is charged under a federal law designed to clamp down on sex tourism by prosecuting suspected overseas child predators in U.S. courts.

Levy said Bianchi gave cash, wine and gifts to the boys so he could "make friends" with them.

"When their guard was down, he made advances on them," he said.

But Bianchi's attorney, famed defense lawyer Mark Geragos, painted a different portrait of his client.

Bianchi, he said, had a "great passion" for traveling to remote destinations and often stayed in boarding houses so he could learn first-hand about the places from local residents.

Geragos said Bianchi was an easy mark for extortion. He said the father of one of the alleged child victims in Moldova often called Bianchi.

"The first thing he wanted to know is, 'Who's going to pay me?' " Geragos told the jury. "The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree."

Prosecutors have flown eight alleged child victims from Moldova to Philadelphia to testify against Bianchi.

"They will tell you what [Bianchi] did to them," Levy told the jury.

The feds said Bianchi met a Moldovan citizen, Ion Gusin, in December 2003. Gusin agreed to act as a translator and pimp for Bianchi.

Gusin is serving a 20-year sentence in Moldova, a poor former Soviet republic located between Ukraine and Romania.

Geragos told jurors that some of the eight alleged victims either recanted their stories or told "drastically" different stories during Gusin's Moldovan trial than what they have told federal prosecutors.

However, Levy said there was an explanation for that. Some of the boys "could not bring themselves to testify about what happened" in front of their families or villagers they knew, he said.

Geragos said much of Bianchi's defense will hinge on Gusin's videotaped testimony.

"He'll tell you not only did none of this happen - he did not procure young boys, men, for Mark Bianchi - but that Mark Bianchi was a gentleman and treated everyone where he went equally," Geragos told the jury.

If convicted, Bianchi faces a minimum of five years behind bars and could face as much as 20 years. The trial is expected to last several weeks. *