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MONTREAL — From his earliest years living in a Brooklyn housing project during the Depression through a career consulting for the U.S. State Department in various Cold War hotspots, Jesse Goldstaub developed a knack for extracting himself from trouble.

But now 83 years old and in failing health, he finds himself ensnared in a criminal drug case and fearing he might die without recovering life savings that he says were wrongly seized by the police.

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In 2011 after a routine checkup, Goldstaub was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He underwent four rounds of chemotherapy, surgery, then more chemotherapy. Doctors told him his chances of survival were not good.

He had settled in Montreal in the late 1980s. Single with no children or immediate family, he said he forged a close friendship with a man he met at his synagogue, Samuel Szlamkowicz. “We became fast friends. I knew his family. I’ve been alone most of my life,” Goldstaub said this week in an interview at the office of his lawyer, Eric Sutton.