O.J. World is a universe of its own

He is older now, grayer around the temples, gimpier in his eroding knees. But in O.J. World, advancing age and even the threat of hard prison time can be momentarily ignored in the intoxicating glare of notoriety.

From the moment O.J. Simpson arrived in the lobby of the Clark County Courthouse for the recent weeklong preliminary hearing into his latest legal scrape, O.J. World was back in business. Imperious behind wraparound sunglasses, he had not reached the courtroom when an admirer squealed her support.

“O.J! We love you!” At the sound of the woman’s voice, Simpson wheeled around, eyebrows arching, and raised both hands in a victory stance.

In O.J. World, attention must always be paid. It is a hard-boiled alternate universe where nearly everyone involved -- sports memorabilia dealers, golfing buddies, law enforcement, trial lawyers, debt collectors, tabloid-show producers, reporters and assorted hangers-on -- is after a piece of O.J. And no one in O.J. World appears to want a bigger piece than O.J. himself.

Simpson’s return to the limelight last week was a four-day pit stop before a full-blown criminal trial scheduled for sometime next year. The hearing ended with a judge ordering Simpson to stand trial on robbery and kidnapping charges in connection with a September Las Vegas hotel room confrontation that was either a drawn-gun heist -- as prosecutors contend -- or a self-styled legal sting operation to recover his own artifacts.

During the hearing, Simpson watched, appearing alternately bored and disgusted, as a procession of estranged former associates testified about the Sept. 13 incident at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino. But they also provided new glimmers about the internal workings of O.J. World.

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Offshore accounts?

“We are all toiling in O.J.’s vineyard,” said David J. Cook, a San Francisco attorney and debt-collection specialist who pursues Simpson in courthouses across the country. Mining last week’s testimony for new revelations about Simpson’s finances and lifestyle, Cook was intrigued by a claim by Bruce Fromong, a former Simpson associate and sports memorabilia dealer, that he had set up offshore accounts for Simpson.

Cook is one of several lawyers working for Fred Goldman, whose son, Ron, was stabbed to death along with Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, at Nicole Simpson’s Brentwood home in 1994. Furious after Simpson was acquitted of criminal charges in the murders, Fred Goldman and other relatives of the victims pressed a civil suit that resulted in a 1997 civil judgment declaring Simpson liable for the deaths. Simpson was ordered to pay Goldman more than $19 million as part of $33 million in restitution.

Over the last decade, Goldman’s lawyers have collected barely “a few thousand dollars,” Cook said. But Goldman’s relentless crusade to attach Simpson’s finances is a constant source of irritation in O.J. World.

Nearly every week, process servers working for Goldman descend on a South Miami neighborhood to deliver court papers at Simpson’s pale-red, tile-roofed ranch house, a gated estate worth more than $1 million. More legal demands arrive by mail and Federal Express. In recent months, Cook and fellow Goldman attorney Peter T. Haven sued a Simpson corporate entity to stop publication and seize control of his hypothetical tell-all “If I Did It” book about the Brentwood murders. In another Santa Monica courtroom move, Cook wrested away Simpson’s supposed Rolex watch only to discover it was a cheap $125 Chinese-made knockoff.

“We keep producing court orders for them to turn over their records and we keep getting the proverbial middle finger,” said Cook, whose penchant for high-stakes legal combat is reflected in an address of his website: squeezebloodfromturnip.com. Their pressure was likely a factor that led to the Las Vegas hotel confrontation. During last week’s hearing, sports memorabilia dealer Thomas Riccio -- the man who helped Simpson set up the confrontation -- testified that Simpson told him during one conversation that “he felt Goldman was pressuring him for everything.”

“We think he became concerned that we were going to get all his assets,” Haven said.

Much of the money Simpson lives on is untouchable despite Goldman’s legal efforts and the court rulings piling up against Simpson.

According to federal income tax records made public during a 2004 legal parry, Simpson relies on an annual flow of nearly $400,000 in pension money from his star years as an NFL running back, and from the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists for his stint as a chair-vaulting advertising icon for Hertz and as an actor in films like “The Towering Inferno” and “Naked Gun.” Federal laws protect pension proceeds from being attached in civil proceedings.

According to his legal foes and to testimony during his recent hearing, Simpson is also preoccupied with arranging and flying off to memorabilia-signing sessions. Set up as assembly-line events where Simpson signs rows of footballs, jerseys and photographs, the appearances are quietly and carefully planned so he can fly in and out without tipping off Goldman’s lawyers.

Haven said that sources in the sports memorabilia business estimated that Simpson made up to $50,000 for a single signing session lasting several hours. Known to attend several such sessions in a year, Simpson may clear as much as $200,000 a year, Haven added.

Simpson’s contacts in the memorabilia business are often longtime associates. One such stalwart was Fromong, who claims he worked with Simpson for years arranging signing sessions before he was rousted by Simpson and gun-toting assailants. The other alleged victim in the casino confrontation was Alfred Beardsley, a nervous-appearing Californian whom Fromong dismissed as an O.J. groupie.

Trying to sell off a trove of Simpson-signed footballs and other mementos in his possession, Beardsley had failed to sell the items to David Cook before turning to Riccio. When Simpson learned about Beardsley’s efforts at deal-making, Riccio testified, he insisted that the mementos were his and he enlisted Riccio’s help in plotting a sting to wrest them back.

Most of the men who were at Simpson’s side during the hotel room confrontation also had some history with the former football great. Charles B. Ehrlich, one of Simpson’s co-defendants, is an old friend. Walter Alexander, who allegedly wielded a gun during the encounter and is now testifying against Simpson, was a longtime golf buddy aside from claims by Simpson lawyers that he once worked as a pimp. Both defendant Clarence J. Stewart Jr. and Michael F. McClinton, another purported gunman who is testifying for prosecutors, claimed to have met Simpson through Alexander.

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Leaks happen

Even inside O.J. World’s insular circles, information inevitably leaks out.

“We get tips all the time that he’s supposed to appear in a city in the Midwest or someplace else,” Haven said. “But the money supposedly never goes directly to him and even if we knew where the money was we’d have to get concrete evidence that there was a payment and that it was going to O.J. But we can’t go around chasing duffel bags of cash we have only a slim chance of winning.”

Simpson is known to keep mementos on hand to sign and dole out to admirers. Pedro Rosado, a Miami chef who is part-owner of Roasters ‘N Toasters, Simpson’s regular breakfast haunt, said his favorite customer ambled out to his Lincoln Navigator one morning and returned with a signed football from a box of flattened balls stashed there.

“He gives footballs away. Why would he go after them with a gun? That sounds like a police set-up to me,” Rosado said, referring to charges that Simpson led two gun-wielding associates in seizing a trove of signed balls and other mementos from Fromong and Beardsley.

In O.J. World, suspicion of police motives is an article of faith. During the Las Vegas hearing, Simpson’s South Florida defense attorney, Yale Galanter, and his Nevada colleague, Gabriel Grasso, homed in on revelations that Riccio had alerted Los Angeles police and the FBI about the pending sale of Simpson mementos and Simpson’s plans to retrieve the items. Simpson, Riccio testified, felt the material was “stolen property” and wanted the items returned.

Riccio testified that both agencies were dismissive of his warnings. Prosecutors used Riccio’s testimony about the law enforcement contacts to show how Simpson ended up taking the law into his own hands.

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Attorney claims ill will

But Galanter, who worked as a Miami-Dade prosecutor in the mid-1980s under then-State’s Atty. Janet Reno, portrays the police inaction as evidence of what he describes as law enforcement’s long-standing animus against Simpson.

“When you go to law enforcement and ask for help and they refuse, what would you call it?” Galanter said in a recent interview. “These guys want to go down in history as the guys who sent O.J. to jail. I know the mindset. Anybody who says that’s not occurring is being disingenuous.”

Since 2000, according to police reports, Miami police officers have been summoned to Simpson’s home at least 18 times. The accounts range from reported fights between Simpson and a longtime girlfriend to a 2001 federal drug raid that did not net any narcotics but led to a drawn-out legal battle with a satellite provider over TV piracy devices found in his home.

Simpson was even ticketed $130 for gunning his power boat at excessive speed through a manatee zone.

Galanter, a south New Jersey native with a proclivity for sharp suits and barbed quotes, has represented Simpson since his 2000 arrest for confronting a South Florida motorist in a road-rage incident.

Simpson was acquitted after a 2001 trial, and Galanter has been at his side ever since, keeping him out of harm’s way despite his spate of encounters with Miami police.

Abbe Rifkin, a veteran Miami-Dade prosecutor who handled the road-rage case against Simpson, brushes off Galanter’s claims of law enforcement retribution as a convenient tactic. “Yale did exactly what any lawyer would have done with the case he had,” she said.

Although Simpson’s trial may be a year away, Galanter already has the broad themes of his defense laid out. Simpson was within his legal rights, Galanter said, to take back property stolen from him.

And defense attorneys will have a “field day” raking over the checkered pasts and conflicting stories of the former Simpson associates who will testify for the state.

“Their problem is, they have witnesses who lied to law enforcement and then went on the witness stand last week and perjured themselves,” Galanter said.

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stephen.braun@latimes.com