Instead, the former girlfriend of drug kingpin Alton "Ace Capone" Coles, wants her money-laundering conviction, linked to the couple's purchase of a luxurious home in South Jersey, overturned.

Asya Richardson, through her lawyer, claims she was unaware that the man she knew as a music company impresario used drug money for the down payment on the house just outside Mullica Hill they bought in the summer of 2005.

"Asya Richardson was a naive young woman who fell in love with, and was duped by, Alton Coles, a deceptive, manipulative individual . . . who hid his illegal activities from her and used her as part of his legitimate front to the outside world," Richardson's lawyer, Ellen C. Brotman, argued in a post-trial motion heard today by U.S. District Court Judge R. Barclay Surrick.

Brotman has asked the judge either to overturn Richardson's conviction or grant her a new trial. Surrick, after an hour-long hearing, said he would take the issue under advisement.

Not surprisingly, federal prosecutors argued that the conviction should stand.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Bresnick said that Richardson, 28, knowingly went along with Coles, helping to launder drug proceeds by negotiating the down payment on the $488,000 house with cash transferred from his bank accounts and by lying about her employment and income records.

"All the evidence established that she knew Coles was a drug dealer and she knew his money was drug money," Bresnick said, describing the house purchase as a "classic money-laundering case."

Coles was arrested at the Gloucester County residence, on Dillon's Lane just outside Mullica Hill, in August 2005 as investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tabacco, Firearms and Explosives launched a series of raids that capped a two-year investigation of his $25 million cocaine network.

Coles and Richardson had moved into the property two weeks earlier.

Richardson was later charged with money-laundering and conspiracy to commit money-laundering. She is the half-sister of former Philadelphia baseketball star Jerome "Pooh" Richardson, who called her hours before the raid to warn that the "feds were coming."

Pooh Richardson testified for the prosecution this year at the trial of a former Philadelphia police detective who was convicted of obstruction of justice for leaking him information about the raid.

Aysa Richardson was convicted along with Coles and four others, including a second Coles girlfriend, in March 2008.

Coles, 35, was sentenced to life plus 55 years. Richardson has had her sentence delayed pending the outcome of her post-trial motions. She could be sentenced to 78 months.

Whatever the outcome, the motions have offered a look at the twisted relationship between Coles and the women he dated while under investigation.

Brotman, in papers filed last year, said Coles "used the women in his life as tools of his trade."

In addition to Richardson, there was Kristina Latney, 33, who had two children with Coles and who lived in a house Coles had purchased in Woodstown, N.J., and Monique Pullins, 25, who lived in an apartment in North Philadelphia that authorities alleged was a Coles stash house for drugs and guns.

Latney testified for the government, admitting that Coles used her to purchase cars and properties and to stash drug proceeds.

"Kristina was his straw-purchaser and Monique held his guns, but Coles needed more," Brotman argued. "He needed a woman to give him respectability."

Brotman contended that Asya Richardson was that woman. Her appeal arguments are built around that premise and her contention that Richardson's conviction was based on circumstantial evidence.

In her oral arguments today, Brotman said that even if Richardson knew Coles was a drug dealer, the prosecution had not provided enough evidence to support an argument that she knew the down payment for the home was drug money or that the transaction was a scheme to launder drug proceeds.

In her appeal motions, Brotman has portrayed Richardson as educated but "innocent to the ways of the neighborhood," a young woman swept off her feet by the smooth-talking, free-spending drug kingpin posing as a record promoter.

During the trial, the prosecution described Coles as a high-living cocaine dealer who used a rap record label he founded, Take Down Records, as a front for his drug operations.

Before his arrest, Coles - a former barber from Darby - was well known in the Philadelphia hiphop music community. He drove around town in a blue Bentley, staged weekly parties at clubs and hosted after-concert affairs for rap stars such as Ludacris and for Power 99, a popular local radio station.

At the same time, authorities alleged, Coles headed a cocaine network that between 1998 and 2005 put about a ton of cocaine and a half-ton of crack into the Philadelphia drug market.

Richardson worked at PhilaFilm, a non-profitorganization that promoted and supported African-American films, when she met Coles in July 2002, her lawyer said. She later worked for the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Council, another non-profit.

Richardson met Coles socially at clubs such as Chrome and later helped him with parties he staged at Palmer's, an after-hours club on Spring Garden Street, according to her lawyer.

But, Brotman argued in her motion, "Coles deliberately and carefully kept Ms. Richardson separate from his drug organization, did not discuss it with her, and did not involve her with it."

Richardson, who testified in her own defense, told the jury that she thought Coles was "a nice guy. . . . He was fun . . . easy-going." And, she said, he had "a strong work ethic."

Federal authorities, on the other hand, painted a picture of Coles as a shrewd businessman who used quasi-legitimate fronts to hide his drug dealing.

Coles publicly supported anti-drug, stop-the-violence events, investigators said, at the same time he was running a violent drug ring.

That audacity was in full view in 2003, authorities alleged, when he made and starred in a 31-minute music video called "New Jack City: The Next Generation."

In it, Coles played Ace Capone, a Southwest Philadelphia drug dealer who used murder and intimidation to corner the crack cocaine market in that area of the city.

The video, authorities argued, was art imitating life.

And, they contend, Asya Richardson knew the difference.