HOLLYWOOD, Florida (Reuters) — Seven years removed from a scandal that tarnished one of America's oldest financial institutions, the diminutive soft-spoken woman who helped launder $7 billion for Russian mobsters and businessmen is hoping to stop people like herself.Lucy Edwards, a Russian-born former Bank of New York vice president who along with her husband was convicted in one of the world's biggest money laundering scams, has shed house arrest and an electronic monitoring bracelet and now hopes to become a consultant on preventing such crimes.

"Rogue employees like myself, they did exist, they exist now and they will exist tomorrow," Edwards said yesterday on the sidelines of a gathering of money laundering experts in Hollywood, Florida.

Edwards, now 48, and her husband, Peter Berlin, pleaded guilty in February 2000 to money laundering conspiracy and to helping two Russian banks conduct illegal activities in the United States.

Edwards cooperated with prosecutors and the FBI and in July she was sentenced to six months house arrest and five years probation for a money laundering operation believed to be one of the biggest in US history.

"All the others pale by comparison," said Charles Intriago, a former US prosecutor who founded Money Laundering Alert, the organisers of the conference in Hollywood.

The Bank of New York, founded in 1784, agreed in November 2005 to pay $38 million in penalties to resolve the case.

Edwards and Berlin were ordered to pay $685,000 in restitution.

Money laundering involves moving ill-gotten funds, derived from drug dealing, kidnapping, theft or other crimes, through a series of bank accounts or transactions until it appears legitimate or "clean."

Edwards and Berlin helped a group of Russian banks set up an elaborate scheme to move billions of dollars out of Russia in the mid- to late-1990s through a network of companies controlled by Berlin.

Edwards said their commissions on the scheme, between $1.5 million and $1.8 million, were either spent or given back and she now owes ten percent of her gross income to pay the $685,000 in restitution.

"It's all gone. I'm starting over. Starting totally over," she said matter-of-factly.

Edwards, a smiling, neatly dressed woman with short hair who speaks with a slight Russian accent, readily admits her wrongdoing.

She said she has tried to make amends by spending countless hours passing the tricks of the trade to prosecutors and FBI agents, information that helped formulate anti-money laundering rules for international banking.

She becomes emotional, flushing deeply, when asked about the cost of her escapade. "I lost basically all my friends," she said, voice trembling.

With improved technology to track bank clients, wire transfers and employee movements, laundering has become much tougher in the last decade, but rogue employees still exist, Edwards said, and no system is foolproof.

Edwards is frank about hoping to use her expertise to land consulting work with some of the many financial institutions and other companies at the conference.

It was a similar path taken by Frank Abagnale Jr., the conman immortalised in the movie "Catch Me If You Can", who turned a fraud spree into a career as an FBI expert and anti-crime consultant.

Edwards said she combs newspapers and Internet sites for signs of money laundering and provides the FBI with clues.

"I would like to be a consultant and to stop people like me. Because now I can see them from a mile away," she said.