Imprisoned private eye Anthony Pellicano once said that for a price -- "$100,000 for starters" -- he could reach out to "people inside" a Los Angeles Police Department illegal gambling investigation and "make a deal to help things go away," according to a petition filed Monday.
The petition was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of a bookmaker who is seeking to have his conviction overturned on grounds that prosecutors failed to disclose that the lead LAPD investigator in his case, Det. Mark Arneson, was himself under investigation for leaking confidential information to Pellicano for years.
Arneson was suspended from the police force for his ties to Pellicano three days before the bookmaker, Erik Portocarrero, pleaded no contest to two felony charges in May 2003, a fact prosecutors also failed to disclose, the petition states.
Shortly after Portocarrero's arrest in December 2001 for running a sports betting operation, his brother began receiving calls from a private investigator, who offered to use his LAPD contacts to help "fix" aspects of the case, the petition states. The brother recalled the name of the private investigator as Anthony Pelligrino, but is now convinced that it was Pellicano, Portocarrero's attorney said.
"Had the connection between Arneson and Pellicano been disclosed, [Portocarrero] could have established that the investigation was intended to produce an illegitimate financial gain for the police officer leading it," attorney Amy Jacks wrote in the petition.
The allegations add a new facet to the ongoing probe into Pellicano's conduct, raising the specter that a man known as the private eye to the stars had the power to influence the outcome of LAPD investigations. One high-ranking LAPD official said detectives were reviewing other cases in which Arneson played a supervisory role to determine whether he was involved in any misconduct.
Pellicano, 59, first became the target of a federal criminal investigation in the summer of 2002 after an FBI informant secretly recorded conversations with a man who claimed he had been hired by Pellicano to threaten a Los Angeles Times reporter researching a story about actor Steven Seagal's alleged ties to the mob. Authorities suspect Arneson tapped into confidential LAPD databases to provide the private investigator with the reporter's home address, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the case.
