Hedge fund manager Adam Sender was angry -- at the man with whom he had invested $1.1 million and at himself for believing it would lead to a successful film company and another venture. So after a year of searching in vain for Aaron Russo, Sender hired private detective Anthony Pellicano.
"I'd like you to make this guy's life as miserable as possible for $200,000," Sender told Pellicano in a phone conversation -- secretly taped by the private eye according to federal prosecutors and played in court Tuesday. "I'm trusting you," Sender said later in the tape. "You have free rein."
In the federal courtroom where Pellicano and four co-defendants are charged with various counts of wiretapping and racketeering there has been plenty of testimony about what the government alleges is Pellicano's scheming with clients to get dirt on behalf of the angry ex-wife, the neurotic filmmaker, the burned benefactor.
Now comes the vindictive investor, Sender, who confirmed he spent $800,000 -- half a million to Pellicano, the rest to lawyers -- to recoup $1.1 million from Russo, a one-time manager of Bette Midler, who had a respectable career managing entertainers and producing movies then turned to politics in the 1990s. Russo died last year.
Sender testified Tuesday that Pellicano not only ran wiretaps on Russo but offered an even darker service.
"One of the scariest things I had was at a meeting at my house," Sender testified. "He said if I wanted to, I could authorize [Pellicano] to have him murdered him on his way back from Las Vegas. . . . He would have someone follow him in a car, force him off the road and bury his body in the desert."
Sender said he didn't take Pellicano up on the alleged offer.
During the testimony, Pellicano sat with his hand to his face, studying his ex-client, unfazed.
Acting as his own defense attorney (therefore required to refer to himself in the third person) Pellicano in his cross-examination suggested the conversation went differently: "Didn't Mr. Pellicano say to you, 'If you're spending all this money on Mr. Russo why don't you just have him killed?' "
"He might have phrased it that way," said Sender, his dark curly hair falling to the shoulders of his tailored dark suit. He is testifying under a "use immunity" agreement, in which his statements cannot be used against him in a criminal prosecution.
