Edwards, who still practices in Prince George, British Columbia, said he and a colleague in 1978 bought out Bandfield, who returned to Oregon. "He didn’t want to do dentistry any more," Edwards said.

Bandfield filed for bankruptcy in 1992 in Oregon, according to court records. The year before, he established International Privacy Corporation, which marketed itself as "confidentially providing offshore services since 1991," according to a cached version of its website, which has since been taken down.

By 2013, Bandfield boasted to a potential client -- who happened to be an undercover agent -- that he had incorporated more than 5,000 corporate structures, according to court records. He created “a pyramid” of entities controlled almost entirely by his employees or affiliates to hide his clients’ ownership of assets, authorities said in court documents.

‘Significant Barriers’

Bandfield used shell companies incorporated in Nevis to hold Belize companies because the law there “imposes significant barriers” on regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a lawsuit with the allegations similar to the criminal case. A man who worked for Bandfield told the agent it would take about eight years for authorities to identify the true owner behind a entity, the agency said.

“The client ‘never controls anything,’" Bandfield told the agent, according to the SEC’s complaint. “‘Control is a bad word around here.’”

Bandfield was arrested in Miami on Sept. 9, 2014. That same day, police in Belize raided his office and hauled off more than 200 cartons of records -- or, as defense lawyers said, "virtually everything that was not nailed to the floor." The records were later given to American prosecutors, the lawyers said.

Substantial Role

The search is now part of Bandfield’s attack on the U.S. case. In court filings, Bandfield said evidence shows the U.S. played a substantial role coordinating what he says was an illegal search in Belize and that U.S. prosecutors are refusing to turn over documents to bolster his claim.

At a hearing last month, the FBI agent who oversaw the case, Thomas McGuire, said he wasn’t involved in the search in Belize and didn’t see documents until he later traveled there. But Bandfield’s lawyers say in filings that e-mails from days before the search indicate that McGuire and other U.S. officials knew it was about to occur.