Pellicano sure he wouldn’t get caught, witness says

A calm Anthony Pellicano confidently assured a onetime assistant not to worry that his alleged wiretapping enterprise would come to the attention of authorities, the former employee and government witness told a federal jury Tuesday.

“He said, ‘Calm down. Relax. They are not going to find anything,’ ” Tarita Virtue recalled during her second day on the stand in the trial of former private investigator Pellicano and four others charged with illegal eavesdropping and other crimes.

Virtue, a 38-year-old model testifying under a grant of immunity, said Pellicano made his reassurances almost eight years ago when the private investigator allegedly wiretapped the ex-girlfriend of a client. The ex-girlfriend, Virtue said, could be heard on a recording speculating that her conversations were being recorded.

The suspicions of Erin Finn, Virtue testified, put her into a momentary tailspin because Virtue was sure that she and her flamboyant boss would be “busted” if telephone bugs were discovered at Finn’s residence.

But as she later learned, Virtue said, the calls were being routed directly into Pellicano’s Sunset Strip offices with the help of one of Pellicano’s alleged accomplices who was a longtime telephone company technician.

Pellicano’s connection to the phone technician and others, including a former LAPD sergeant and a computer expert who are also on trial, allowed him to eavesdrop with abandon on the rich and famous or their adversaries, Virtue said during five hours on the witness stand.

“Anthony Pellicano was the only private investigator I’ve ever known who never left the office,” she told the packed courtroom of U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer.

But for all his self-confidence, Virtue testified, the secretive Pellicano could also be explosive during the nearly two years she worked for him.

“Did defendant Pellicano ever tell you what to do . . . if the FBI ever came around asking questions?” Assistant U.S. Atty. Daniel Saunders asked.

Yes, she replied, explaining how he yelled at her when she said she would simply deny any wrongdoing.

“Wrong [expletive] answer,” she quoted Pellicano as saying. Instead, Virtue testified, Pellicano told her to refuse to answer any questions and get arrested if necessary because he would bail her out of jail.

During a sometimes fierce cross-examination, Virtue said she was a reluctant government witness but acknowledged that it had brought her some fame, with newspaper interviews and a 2003 photo spread in the men’s magazine Maxim.

In her testimony, Virtue added new details implicating former LAPD Sgt. Mark Arneson and computer expert Kevin Kachikian in Pellicano’s alleged crimes -- information that she did not disclose in previous interviews with federal authorities or during her testimony before a grand jury.

Defense attorneys tried to discredit her as being unreliable.

Virtue defended herself, saying that no one had ever asked her questions prompting such details prior to this trial.

Her testimony continues today.

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greg.krikorian@latimes.com