Deputy DA Quits During Probe of Alleged Tips in ZZZZ Best Case

A Los Angeles County prosecutor, under investigation for allegedly tipping two reputed organized crime figures in the ZZZZ Best fraud case that they were under police surveillance, resigned Monday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Edward Consiglio, 47, a 14-year veteran prosecutor who had been on leave from his job in the Van Nuys office for about eight months, submitted his resignation through attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.

“I think he just felt his ability to function as a prosecutor was somewhat impaired at this point,” Cochran said in an interview. “He thought that this point was a good time to make a change.”

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert I. Garcetti said he received a two-paragraph letter from Cochran on Monday telling of Consiglio’s resignation.

“I don’t know what future plans he has professionally,” Garcetti said.

Los Angeles Police Department officials asked the state attorney general’s office last December to consider obstruction of justice charges against Consiglio after an investigation by the police Organized Crime Intelligence Division.

State prosecutors were called in to avoid the conflict of interest that would result if the district attorney’s office was asked to investigate one of its own members.

The deputy attorney general handling the case, Charlene Hanaka, could not be reached for comment on Consiglio’s resignation. Her supervisor, Deputy Atty. Gen. Mark A. Hart, said he could not comment directly on an ongoing investigation, but noted that “if somebody is being investigated for criminal charges, then the fact that he has resigned from the DA’s office shouldn’t change anything.”

Mitchell Egers, an attorney who represents Consiglio in the criminal investigation, said: “I expect a decision shortly by the attorney general’s office and there is no question in my mind that there is no case against Mr. Consiglio. . . . Mr. Consiglio has done nothing wrong.”

According to a still-sealed police affidavit, Consiglio warned two key figures under investigation in the ZZZZ Best case, Maurice Rind, 49, and Richard Schulman, 53, both of Encino, that they were being watched by police. Police have said that both men have ties to East Coast organized crime families.

Neither Rind nor Schulman, both of whom have prison records, have been arrested or charged in the ZZZZ Best case. But police reports submitted to a congressional subcommittee described them as behind-the-scenes financiers and advisers to the company.

ZZZZ Best, a once high-flying Reseda-based carpet cleaning firm founded by 21-year-old Barry Minkow, collapsed last July amid allegations that grossly inflated revenue reports had helped it become one of Wall Street’s hottest stocks. Police reports said that both Rind and Schulman earned more than $1 million each on one ZZZZ Best stock deal alone.

Rind, who served prison terms for stock and mail fraud in the 1970s, told The Times in an interview last month that he and Consiglio had been friends since 1984 and that he had recommended commodity, stock and art purchases for the prosecutor.

“Ed Consiglio knows me good,” Rind told detectives last July, according to the affidavit.

Additionally, according to the affidavit, Consiglio in September, 1986, twice retrieved information for Rind from the National Crime Information Center, a confidential law enforcement data network. The information reportedly was about another suspect in the ZZZZ Best case, Ronnie A. Lorenzo, the manager of Malibu’s Splash restaurant, who is identified in police reports as a reputed organized crime figure.

When confronted with this information by detectives last May, Consiglio, according to the affidavit, “spontaneously stated that he hoped he had not done anything wrong.”