Posted on 01/24/2004 4:38:28 AM PST by FormerACLUmember
The private Hollywood investigator and central figure in a federal wiretapping investigation, Anthony Pellicano, was sentenced on Friday to 30 months in prison on an unrelated weapons charge.
In issuing the sentence, Judge Dickran M. Tevrizian Jr. of federal District Court here rejected defense pleas that Mr. Pellicano had no money and fined him $6,000. Mr. Pellicano pleaded guilty in October to illegal possession of hand grenades and plastic explosives. The weapons were found in 2002 in a raid on his office.
Mr. Pellicano, once a high-flying figure who often attended movie premieres and dined in fancy restaurants, arrived in the courtroom downtown in handcuffs and leg chains accompanied by two marshals. He sat impassively, a wan and bespectacled figure in loose-fitting blue pants, an olive windbreaker and blue sandals. He made no comment.
It was plainly a humbling experience for a colorful person whose well-known tough-guy image seemed out of the pages of the novel and film "L.A. Confidential." His clients have included celebrities like Roseanne Barr, Kevin Costner, Michael Jackson, Sylvester Stallone and Elizabeth Taylor.
Mr. Pellicano began serving his sentence in November at the Federal Metropolitan Detention Center here.
The authorities seemed to hope that the prison term would extend much further as a result of a separate grand jury investigation into his reported illegal wiretapping of prominent people in Hollywood. Mr. Pellicano has refused to cooperate in the investigation, and his lawyer, Donald M. Re, said this week that there was "no possibility" that he would do so.
Mr. Pellicano's former clients and employees have been questioned in the wiretapping investigation. One of the most powerful lawyers in Hollywood, Bert Fields, acknowledged late last year that he was a subject of the investigation. Other prominent lawyers who have retained Mr. Pellicano over the years include Martin Singer and Howard Weitzman.
The federal authorities are seeking to determine whether any of the clients were involved in the wiretapping case, the officials said.
The case against Mr. Pellicano began strangely, according to documents filed by the United States attorney's office. The papers said that in June 2002 a reporter for The Los Angeles Times, Anita Busch, found her car vandalized, a shatter mark that appeared to be a bullet hole in her windshield, a note saying "STOP" and a tin-foil tray holding a dead fish and a rose.
A convicted felon, Alex Proctor, was arrested after he telling an F.B.I. informant in a taped conversation that Mr. Pellicano had hired him to silence Ms. Busch's reporting. Ms. Busch was working on an article about the actor Steven Seagal and his relationship to a mob figure. Government documents cited many telephone calls between Mr. Pellicano and Mr. Proctor, who is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence on an unrelated charge of heroin trafficking.
A raid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at Mr. Pellicano's office on Sunset Boulevard in November 2002 found not only the grenades, but also what the authorities said were transcripts of the wiretaps. The authorities declined to discuss the details of the grand jury investigation and when it might hand up indictments.
Officials also seized a file labeled "Stephen Seagal matter," copies of an article that Ms. Busch had helped write about Mr. Seagal, as well as an article about him in the October 2002 issue of Vanity Fair, written by Ned Zeman, later reported being assaulted in his car in November 2002 by what federal documents described as "a gun-wielding individual who told him simply, `Stop!' "
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Lookee here, folks. This is how a real "professional" operates -- he leaves grenades and transcripts of illegal wiretaps, etc. in his tony Sunset Boulevard office for a band or "warrant warriors" to find for a U. S. Attorney to fashion into a hangman's noose.
And I'll bet that he thinks that the word "cache" is something folks say when they are discussing the merits of particular wines and perfumes.
What a waste of southern California's bounteous array of forests, desert lands, mountain cabins, marina-based yachts,etc., etc., etc.
Yup, it's awesome to watch the real "pros" in action......
Hillary will run for president very soon. Could Pellicano present a problem to her? 30 months is enough time to get rid of him in prison. He might meet up with an accident, have a heart attack, etc., etc.
And the conspiracies continue............
I wonder if this weasel hoarder kept any recordings from his career with the Democratic National Committee and Hillary's Clinton Defense Fund? If so, one can be certain that Hillary and Terry McAwful have been pulling every dirty trick in the book to make these vanish.
And the "Pelican"? I think he may soon be room temperature... an unfortunate accident, prison fight, whatever...
Drug overdose is my bet.
Maybe he will end up hanging from a noose like the way he killed Kathleen Wiley's pet cat as a warning from the Clintons.
Or am I just getting the Pelican, the Clintons, Vince Foster, Terry Lenzner, Web Hubbell, and the Arkansas Mafia confused with a sordid John Grisham movie?
Yes mam, shortly before he was to testify against the Clintons, the federal prison authorities locked him in solitary and "forgot" to give him his heart medicine. Dead and a carp the next AM.
Nothing to see here, please move along...
P.S. The Pelican better have his will made out and be fully insured)
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