New details offered in private eye's case
Prosecutors preview next week's trial of Anthony Pellicano, including an alleged talk with super-agent Michael Ovitz.
A Los Angeles police officer on Anthony Pellicano's payroll plumbed law enforcement databases for confidential information on two reporters after Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz told the private eye he believed the journalists had written negative stories about him, federal prosecutors alleged in court papers released on Friday.
The 129-page document, previewing prosecutors' strategy in next week's federal trial of Pellicano and four co-defendants, offers more detail than ever before about allegations that the onetime private investigator to the stars paid off cops, telephone company employees and others on behalf of his famous clients in Hollywood and Los Angeles' legal community.
The trial memorandum portrays Pellicano as the calculating ringleader of an enterprise that sought to dig up dirt for well-heeled clients facing divorce, civil lawsuits and even criminal charges including murder and multiple rapes.
Prosecutors said they had one CD recording of an actual wiretap, written summaries of other illegally recorded conversations, and sworn statements by Pellicano's clients and former employees that they listened to thousands of intercepted calls.
The former LAPD sergeant, Mark Arneson, ran more than 2,500 database searches for criminal histories on 300 people, the memo said. And Pellicano monitored conversations from at least one "listening post" he rented in the San Fernando Valley.
"Operating under a veneer of legitimacy . . . Pellicano obtained a vaunted reputation as a private investigator who reliably obtained information that other investigators could not," prosecutors Daniel Saunders and Kevin Lally said in their papers. "Underneath this veneer, however, was a racketeering enterprise that prospered by trafficking in illegally acquired personal information."
In a federal grand jury indictment unsealed two years ago, Pellicano was charged with racketeering, wiretapping and other crimes. The 63-year-old former investigator, who has denied the government's allegations and is representing himself at trial, remains in federal custody and could not be reached for comment Friday.
Attorneys for Arneson and for former SBC and Pacific Bell employee Rayford Earl Turner also could not be reached. The two defendants, who have pleaded not guilty, are accused of receiving tens of thousands of dollars from Pellicano to illegally investigate his targets.
