Fraud Suspect Says He Was Duped : ‘Alliance’: A lawyer who called attention to the alleged network and helped prosecutors says he has been indicted unfairly.

One of 14 attorneys indicted in the “Alliance” insurance fraud and legal corruption case testified Wednesday that he was double-crossed by federal prosecutors after helping them gather key evidence.

Leonardo T. Radomile spent most of the day on the witness stand trying to persuade U.S. District Judge Judith Keep that he should not have been indicted on mail fraud and racketeering charges.

Radomile, a 44-year-old San Diego attorney, said he had originally reported Alliance activities to the government and agreed to work undercover in three separate investigations of the alleged network. Authorities have acknowledged that Radomile brought the case to their attention.

The hearing on a defense motion to drop charges against Radomile was scheduled to resume today. Frank Braun, an associate producer of a “60 Minutes” report on the Alliance case, was subpoenaed as a defense witness and is expected to take the stand today. But Braun said he intended to invoke California’s shield law, which protects reporters from divulging sources.

The Alliance was a network of lawyers and their associates who allegedly joined forces to prolong insurance litigation and overcharge insurance companies. Most members of the group practiced law in the San Fernando Valley or lived there.

Eighteen alleged Alliance members were indicted in April, including Radomile. Seven others pleaded guilty to mail fraud charges before the indictment.

The Alliance allegedly took advantage of a 1984 state appellate court decision that required insurance companies to pay for lawyers chosen by their insured clients facing civil damage suits.

Prosecutors say Alliance lawyers routinely represented both plaintiffs and defendants in such suits and in some cases actually recruited insured clients with the intention of defrauding insurers, whom the government says were cheated out of as much as $50 million.

Radomile contended that the U.S. Attorney’s Office and postal inspectors agreed to protect him from criminal prosecution and from physical harm at the hands of Lynn Boyd Stites, the accused Alliance ringleader who is now a fugitive.

Federal prosecutors have said in court documents that Radomile approached the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles in 1987 with information about the Alliance.

But the government contends that he was never promised immunity for his undercover work and that its evidence was gathered in large part from insurance industry representatives.

However, Radomile said Wednesday that authorities relied on him throughout three separate Alliance investigations. “No one ever criticized the work I had done,” he said. “They made a representation to me that I was safe and not to worry about the threats” of prosecution.

He added that investigators and prosecutors approached him when they mounted a third Alliance investigation in San Diego in September, 1988, after two earlier inquiries in Los Angeles came up short.

“They were asking me to be part of the team again,” Radomile said.

If convicted, he could serve up to 25 years in prison.