MCA Official Suspected of Funneling Funds to Mafia

A top official of MCA, the entertainment conglomerate, is suspected of funneling company money to a ranking East Coast Mafia boss, according to sworn statements by FBI agents in support of wiretaps on the executive’s telephone.

Eugene F. Giaquinto, 57, president of MCA’s Home Video Division, is believed to have passed “a large amount of money on a yearly basis” to Edward M. (The Conductor) Sciandra, the reputed underboss of Pennsylvania’s Bufalino crime family, according to the documents, recently unsealed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

The money allegedly flowed to Sciandra through a Clifton, N.J.-based company, North Star Graphics, which has a $12-million to $15-million a year contract to package MCA’s home videocassettes, including the top-selling “E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial,” according to the affidavits. The documents do not say how much money allegedly went to Sciandra.

North Star’s president, Michael Del Gaizo, is a longtime acquaintance of Giaquinto, according to investigators.

The FBI also believes that Giaquinto may be Sciandra’s nephew and alleges in court documents that Giaquinto has a longstanding relationship with John Gotti, the reputed head of New York’s Gambino crime family.

MCA’s attorney, Ronald L. Olson, said Wednesday that a line should be drawn between any investigation of Giaquinto and MCA.

“MCA has been advised repeatedly that it is not a target or a subject of this Department of Justice investigation,” he said.

Olson added that MCA had “no knowledge” of any money passed to Sciandra “through anybody.”

“We believe that monies paid to North Star were competitive with services rendered by them,” he said.

In 1981, Sciandra was implicated along with North Star Graphics in a $68,000 false invoicing scheme that apparently victimized MCA. Sciandra and two others were convicted on tax evasion charges in connection with that case.

In a background report before Sciandra’s sentencing, federal prosecutors said he was able to deliver business to North Star from MCA because of his mob ties.

The documents unsealed in San Francisco were the result of the indictment last September of Angelo T. Commito, 43, of Fairfax, Calif., described by the FBI as an associate of organized crime figures. According to the indictment, Commito paid kickbacks to obtain contracts to provide prepaid health-care plans for labor unions.

Information developed from wiretaps in that case has become part of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force into possible labor racketeering, extortion, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and insider stock trading in the Hollywood movie industry.

The subjects of the Hollywood investigation include Giaquinto; his close friend, Martin Bacow, who is a self-styled Hollywood labor consultant, and retired Los Angeles Police Detective John St. John, a former member of the department’s organized-crime intelligence unit. St. John is suspected of leaking sensitive information on law enforcement investigations to Bacow and Giaquinto.

St. John, a 25-year police veteran who specialized in the entertainment industry, took early retirement last February after being questioned by Los Angeles Police Department investigators about the suspected leaks.

Among the allegations contained in the wiretap documents:

- Giaquinto has obtained “confidential law enforcement information” from unnamed government sources in Washington.

- Bacow, Sciandra, Del Gaizo and Commito “are using extortionate practices to ensure that Giaquinto retains his position” at the company.

In one wiretapped phone conversation, Giaquinto discussed a rift among top executives at MCA and expressed fears that he might lose his job. In that case, he said, laughing, MCA would be “in for trouble.” The FBI said in the affidavits that it believes that Giaquinto may have been indicating that he would use his influence with the unions through Bacow or through the Mafia “to threaten MCA and its top executives with either economic or physical harm.”

- Giaquinto, Bacow and others engaged in “the use of manipulative or deceptive practices in buying and selling MCA stock.”

In this context, the head of the FBI’s investigation, Special Agent Thomas G. Gates, said in a 79-page affidavit that he listened to numerous telephone conversations in which Giaquinto furnished information to Bacow and others about the health of MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman. These conversations, in the summer of 1987, included “the status of takeover attempts of MCA and other such information in advance of public disclosures in the media,” Gates said.

Giaquinto could not be reached for comment.

His attorney, Richard P. Crain Jr., former chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force in Los Angeles, did not return a reporter’s telephone calls.

Bacow, who, according to the FBI documents, is suspected of “threatening strikes . . . to extort money or other things of value from movie and television production companies,” branded the allegations “the most ridiculous thing in the world.”

“They (the FBI) are trying to defame and frame me,” Bacow said. “This is terrible. I’ve never been arrested.”

Del Gaizo could not be reached for comment, but his sister and lawyer, Maria Del Gaizo Noto, said of the allegations: “This is outrageous. This is absolutely false. The FBI has lied before. The FBI is lying.”

As previously reported by The Times, Giaquinto has been involved in a bitter power struggle inside the company with Irving Azoff, the chairman of MCA’s Music Entertainment Division.

According to the FBI agent’s affidavit, in a June, 1987, telephone conversation, “Giaquinto told Bacow that A (a reference to Irving Azoff) was planning to take over the whole thing. . . . Bacow told Giaquinto to wait, it’s warfare.”

In a later conversation, Gates reported, “Giaquinto said that if they want war, that he had had a meeting in New York, and he had anything he wanted, and it came from No. 1. Bacow asked if it was the G guy and Giaquinto said yes.

“Giaquinto said if he made one phone call, he could have them (a possible reference to Mafia figures around the country) all on planes.”

FBI Agent Gates said he believed that “the reference to the G guy was a reference to John Gotti, the (reputed) boss of the Gambino family. . . .”

The next day, in another monitored telephone conversation, according to Gates’ affidavit, “Giaquinto said he had carte blanche with G (Gotti) in New York and that he had known him . . . all his life.”

The documents also chronicle Bacow and Giaquinto’s alleged attempts to obtain concealed weapon permits and Giaquinto’s apparent fear for his life, apparently when Sciandra became angry about the amount of money he was receiving from MCA.

“Giaquinto said he wasn’t calling out the troops, but he didn’t want to be alone. He said he had the lady and the kids, and the move was also on him,” according to Gates.

He said Bacow replied that “if he had to go ahead and protect himself, ‘I don’t pull punches.’ ”

Later, he said, Bacow commented, “Tough guys are worth the price of a bullet to me.”

Contributing to this story was Times staff writer Dan Morain.