Silberman Case Legal Jockeying Focuses on Taps of Petti’s Calls : Hearing: Despite 15 years of FBI surveillance, defense will be given transcripts of only 2 conversations.

The FBI has been wiretapping reputed San Diego mobster Chris Petti for 15 years, but only two conversations from that long history of electronic surveillance will be turned over to defense attorneys representing Petti, Richard T. Silberman and three other men accused in a complex money-laundering case, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday.

And, although assistant U. S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder Jr. continues to maintain that he will not call mobster-turned-informant Robert Benjamin to the stand when the case goes to trial in April, defense attorneys insisted that they be allowed to hear and challenge his testimony in court.

“I have the right to subpoena him,” said Oscar Goodman, a Las Vegas attorney representing Petti. “I want him in there so the jury can see what they’re dealing with, so the jury can see how this guy is not the paragon of truth.”

Petti and Silberman, a San Diego businessman with ties to state Democratic Party officials, along with three others were charged earlier this year in U. S. District Court with carrying out an elaborate money-laundering scheme.

According to the government, Silberman, with the aid of Petti, attempted to launder money he believed was proceeds from illegal Colombian drug sales, but in reality was money from an undercover FBI agent.

In a status hearing Tuesday morning on the case, Judge J. Lawrence Irving indicated he was reluctant to grant requests for delays in the case. He said he hoped to have pretrial motions argued in January and the matter before a jury in April.

Also at the hearing, Gorder acknowledged the federal government’s longstanding interest in Petti, once considered heir-apparent to Frank (the Bomp) Bompensiero, a notorious San Diego underworld figure who was gunned down in 1977 in an alley in Pacific Beach.

In describing the FBI’s wiretapping efforts against Petti, Gorder said there are “a number of other applications and orders, primarily from other (federal judicial) districts, authorizing electronic surveillance from 1974 through 1988.”

He said those wiretaps are in addition to the roving wiretap used by the government in making the money-laundering case against Petti, Silberman and the other defendants. He said some of the taps covering the 15 years involved criminal cases that are now closed, and only two of the overheard conversations have any bearing in the money-laundering trial.

Gorder declined to identify the nature of those conversations, other than to say that one occurred in Las Vegas and the other in Los Angeles. He agreed to arrange for transcripts of both conversations to be turned over to defense attorneys.

Goodman, however, said the Las Vegas conversation involved Petti and James Skountzos, also known as Jimmy Skountz, whom FBI surveillance reports describe as “a person known to be a convicted felon with a history of involvement in robbery.”

And he said the Los Angeles conversation was between Petti and Carmen DiNunzio, an alleged mob strongman based in the Los Angeles area.

Goodman declined to discuss the nature of those conversations, and he downplayed the significance of any information taken from the wiretaps.

He also strongly chastised the government for subjecting Petti to such a lengthy period of electronic eavesdropping. He said he wanted transcripts of all of the tapes, which he said was “way in excess of 10 tapes, even more than 30 or 40,” to see if any of them were improperly ordered or conducted illegally and therefore “tainted.”

He said it is possible that, if these earlier tapes were conducted improperly, the roving wiretap also might have been done incorrectly, or at the least the information obtained for the indictment was gathered illegally.

He said the FBI often harasses targets of their investigations. He said a former client of his, Anthony (Tony the Ant) Spilotro, was once the subject of 1,143 wiretaps obtained in just one year. Spilotro was reportedly the Chicago mob’s overseer in Las Vegas and a close associate of Petti; his body was found in an Indiana farm field.

Silberman’s attorney, James J. Brosnahan of San Francisco, did not attend Tuesday’s hearing. But, in a letter to Irving on behalf of all the defense attorneys, Brosnahan echoed Goodman’s concerns that Benjamin be compelled to testify.

Benjamin, a Petti associate, was enlisted by the FBI to put Petti in touch with the undercover agent posing as the money launderer. According to the prosecutors, Petti in turn put the undercover agent in touch with Silberman.

Brosnahan, in his letter to the judge, said he wants the government to turn over Benjamin’s “conviction record and evidence of any criminal offenses that he is known or believed by the government to have committed since he became a government informant in 1977.”

The letter also asks how much government money Benjamin was paid to work on the case and whether he was involved in any other criminal investigation at the time he was working for the FBI on the Petti-Silberman case.

Benjamin, the letter said, “is responsible for the government’s decision to target” the defendants. Background information about him “is critical to the defense, whether or not Mr. Benjamin is called as a witness,” the letter said.

“The nature and extent of Mr. Benjamin’s criminal activity will bear, for example, on the credibility of the information used to obtain the various search warrants and wiretap authorization orders,” the letter added, “and on the materiality of omissions in the affidavits concerning Mr. Benjamin’s reliability.”

Since the indictments were returned in April, Benjamin has been moved to an undisclosed location under federal protective custody.