New details in private eye’s case

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.

Another key defendant, Kevin Kachikian, also is charged with wiretapping for allegedly devising and constructing the equipment, dubbed Telesleuth, that was used in the phone surveillance. The court papers released Friday allege that he and Pellicano built about 50 of the wiretapping boxes used in the crimes.

Kachikian’s attorney, Adam Braun, said Friday that the government’s trial memo ignores his client’s repeated statements to authorities that Kachikian always believed Telesleuth would be marketed to law enforcement agencies, based largely on Pellicano’s years as a government forensics expert.

“The [pending] trial will confirm what we have always maintained: that there is no evidence that Kevin knew -- let alone intended -- that Telesleuth be misused for illegal, private wiretaps,” Braun said.

Though the trial memo focuses on many of the same cases that have been talked about for years, it also provides new information about the government’s tightly held evidence.

It outlines, for example, how specific clients, former clients and even accused co-conspirators with Pellicano will testify about his allegedly widespread use of wiretaps and confidential information gleaned from police databases to gain the upper hand in courtroom battles or other disputes.

The court papers also describe how Pellicano and Arneson allegedly dug up dirt on nine rape victims of one criminal defendant and a murder victim who plunged to her death from the balcony of a Long Beach hotel.

In each case, the man accused of the crime, a Pellicano client, was acquitted.

And the court papers offer a glimpse at a handful of the government’s key witnesses.

According to the court papers, hedge fund manager Adam Sender will testify that Pellicano played him five to 10 recordings of wiretapped conversations between Sender’s former business partner, movie producer Aaron Russo, and Russo’s sons and political contacts during a lawsuit.

Arneson also figured in that case, searching police databases for information on a witness whom LAPD officers from the Pacific Division -- where Arneson worked -- later attempted to arrest on an outstanding warrant. For his services, the government says, Sender paid Pellicano $500,000.

Venture capitalist Alec Gores, who paid Pellicano at least $160,000, will tell jurors that the former private eye played him wiretapped calls between Gores’ wife and his younger brother, the memo says. A recording of their wire-tapped call was recovered by the FBI in its search of Pellicano’s offices, according to the government.

In the case of the Ovitz-Pellicano conversations six years ago, the trial memo says Ovitz and Pellicano discussed the agent’s belief that then-New York Times reporter Bernard Weinraub had “been recycling negative stories about him,” sometimes with the assistance of Anita Busch, who worked as a Los Angeles Times writer.

Records show that Arneson searched the FBI’s national database for information on Weinraub and Busch on May 16, 2002. Department of Motor Vehicles photos of the reporters requested that same day were recovered during a search of Pellicano’s computers, the memo says.

It was a threat against Busch that triggered the Pellicano investigation, according to earlier court papers.

In July 2003, after he resigned from the LAPD, Arneson told the FBI that he had been investigating whether Busch “was involved in gambling or other organized crime activities.”

Prosecutors called that story “a complete fabrication.”

Late Friday, Ovitz’ attorney, James Ellis, said: “Neither Mr. Ovitz nor Artists Management Group authorized or had any knowledge of this activity.”

Ellis added that Ovitz was on a list of potential prosecution witnesses that “contains more than 200 individuals.”

greg.krikorian@latimes.com Times staff writer Kim Christensen contributed to this report.