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At the Pellicano Wiretapping Trial

By William Wheaton
williamwheaton@mac.com
http://www.myspace.com/williamwheaton

[Editor’s Note: This is an exclusive to REVIEWER MAGAZINE as related by the twisted pen of William Wheaton. Watch Wheaton’s post-Wiretapping Trial coverage video interviews here and here. ~RR]

The Paparazzi

April 2nd, Los Angeles: I stood outside the door of the Roybal Federal Building near Downtown Los Angeles. I talked briefly with a photographer from The New York Post about the federal trial of private investigator Anthony Pellicano. I asked him what he thought the outcome of the trial would be.

“It means absolutely nothing. No one cares.”

He was waiting for Sandra Carradine, the ex-wife of actor Keith Carradine from the television hits Deadwood and Kung Fu to walk out the door to snap a shot of her for the papers. She was inside the federal building testifying about conspiring to tap her ex-husband’s phones with her private investigator and for some-time lover Anthony Pellicano.

The Post photographer’s attitude about the trial is exemplary of one of the two extremes in the spectrum of journalism in regards to the Pellicano trial. One side, which was epitomized by most of the writings of Fox News webpage columnist Roger Friedman, had predicted that Pellicano would be the biggest Hollywood scandal in years, the other side, the side of the Post photographer claims the story means nothing, and curiously uses the phrases ‘bomb” or “dud” or “fizzle out” that you would find used to described films that bombed.

It’s neither, but I’d say it’s closer to the side of big. It may be that it was difficult to market as a story to tabloids because the business and law involved is very involved, but major news sources such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and the Huffington Post maintain ongoing coverage of the trial. From the perspective of celebrity it may have been a disappointment—the trial and investigation looked like it would mean the outing of Tom Cruise’s homosexuality—but it appears only to have been briefly alluded to in the trial when former Pellicano employee Tarita Virtue testified that “sissy” was the codeword for Pellicano’s files on Cruise- the near leader of a cult whose founder was convinced that he could cure homosexuality being exposed as a closet homosexual would have been good, true. But the trail was more like a white-collar crime case with peripheral celebrity involvements and entanglements. Courtney Love, Tom Cruise and Michael Jackson during his first wave of child molestation allegations where all clients of Pellicano. Michael Jackson wasn’t mentioned in the trial, a tape of a conversation between Courtney Love and Pellicano was posted on Huffington Post, and Tom Cruise was mentioned in the trial, and Pellicano is likely to have used information obtained illegally working for Cruise. However, many prominent film and inside power players were exposed in connection to Pellicano’s wiretapping and in some cases admitted to listening to or gaining information from Pellicano’s phone taps.

As Sandra Carradine walked out the door, the photographer from the Post ran after her as she and a man accompanying her ran for a cab trying to avoid the photographer. This was no consensual act and clearly against the will of Sandra Carradine. The car speed away.

That was my welcome to the circus known as U.S. v. Anthony Pellicano.

The Agony of Andrew Stevens

April 3rd, Los Angeles: The first testimony and cross examination of Michelle Malkin, relating to her giving of information on cable pairs and binding posts to former SBC employee and co-defendant Ray Turner relating to information she had given to him regarding binding posts and cable pairs of SBC costumers. She spoke of giving information to Ray Turner and being questioned both by the FBI and in an internal investigation by SBC. When cross-examined by Ms. Soo Hoo, (attorney for Ray Turner) Michelle Malkin admitted that yes, Mr. Ray Turner is a very good looking man, that he does look much like Trey Parker, and that she liked him. One statement that Michelle Malkin made that struck me was that she said” This may sound strange but I didn’t think Mr. Turner would risk my career at the telephone company.”

When Michelle Malkin was dismissed, Timea Zsibrita, the sister of Monika Zsibrita, the Hungarian model that Chris Rock had hired Pellicano to investigate. Timea Zsibrita was however testifying about a matter in which she was impregnated by a CEO named Ivan Hoffman and Pellicano was called in as negotiator on the manner. Timea was given $120,000.00 to have an abortion and she testified, Pellicano drove her to the clinic.

This is what she was called in for was this, though. On an overhead projector was shown a spreadsheet of information that was a police DMV database search. One of the federal prosecutors asked Timea to identify her name and the name of her sister and other information, some of the information such as Social Security number redacted or inked out in the overhead version, while she was asked to identify the information on a version she held, in which the information is not redacted. This kind of material, which constituted a good bit of the actual trial, is in relation to alleged Illegal database searches conducted by retired police chief co-defendant Sgt. Mark Arneson. Behind me in the press box, a male reporter in whispered tones explained to a woman (I think Nancy Dillon of the Daily News) that this was the sister of the woman who had tried to hit Pellicano with a paternity suit and that there was some subplot about the two sisters being predators that took advantage of the rich and famous.

Pellicano, who operates as his own attorney in a disastrous move, cross-examined Timea and asked if there was any reason for surveillance in this case. She said there wasn’t. Timea Zsibrifta’s testimony is brief but is somewhat intriguing when understood in relation with later testimony about the Chris Rock matter.

Much more involved was the testimony of Andrew Stevens. Andrew Stevens is a film producer that entered into dispute with a company called Intertainment headed by a German named `Barry’ Beares. Andrew Stevens was considering a defamation suit against Intertainment and retained one Mr. Bertie Fields, the attorney to the honorable Mr. Cruise and Mr. Jackson. Bertie Fields plays a prominent role in this trial. On advice of Bertie Fields, Andrew Stevens was told to hire Anthony Pellicano “to take him off the market.” Andrew Stevens was granted use immunity and thus, he can’t be charged with anything. There’s a box of tissues next to the witness box in case of tears, of which there are many in the Pellicano trial, both in the case of his alleged victims and the people who hired him. Andrew Stevens was one of them.

Before playing a tape of a telephone conversation between Andrew Stevens and Pellicano, which federal prosecutor Kevin Lally asked if Andrew Stevens knew was being recorded which Stevens said he did not. It is actually illegal to do that in California, but Pellicano did it all the time. Only one actual conversation or recording is a wiretapped conversation in the trial, a conversation between Lisa and Tom Gores, in relation to Alex Gores’s inquiries into his wife’s affair with his brother. However, Pellicano, being the proud member of Mensa and the genius that he no doubt is, tape recorded all of his conversations with his clients on encrypted tapes, many of which the FBI decoded and in which he talks to his clients about listening to people’s telephone conversations. As a matter of fact, much time was spent in court listening to excerpts of such calls. However, Pellicano, being the genius that he is, will, no doubt, acting as his own attorney, save the day for himself. After all, he is a member of Mensa and, therefore, must be smarter then the rest of us. He’s also, as he points out in the taped conversation with Andrew Stevens, a “Sicilian which means if you’re with me you’re with me and that’s that.”

During the playing of the phone conversations, Andrew Stevens wept on the stand, his face betraying internal agony over the sin he had committed, to which others had plead guilty, called within our legal system conspiracy to wiretap. As one conversation played, you could hear the voice of Anthony Pellicano asking him for the phone numbers of Steve Brown and other people in the Intertainment side of the dispute. Chad Hummel, the excellent defense lawyer for Mark Arneson, asked why he is heard on the tape giving out phone number after phone number. While Andrew Stevens admits to knowing that Pellicano was tapping phones he says the reason was that he hadn’t used a private investigator before and that he didn’t really know what they did or how they operated.

Andrew Stevens’ testimony in this trial is much like other testimony. A Hollywood power player admits that in some matter, especially in legal matters, Pellicano was called in often by a lawyer to investigate the other parties. In many instances the lawyer is Bertie Fields, which has always lead me to suspect that in the case where the boy accused Michael Jackson of molestation and then was paid millions of dollars and then refused to testify, or in all the various legal matters Pellicano may have worked for Tom Cruise, you have to be suspicious, which may cause real problems for those two especially within the industry.

Andrew Stevens wept. He was caught in a state of distress in public admitting before the world that he had involved himself in the queer and dirty crime of wiretapping. His admission was not so different then many others- Robert Pfeiffer who had gone from being in the new wave band Human Switchboard to being a record executive to being in the news about pleading guilty to conspiracy to wiretap was on that same stand. Admitting to the same thing as many other wealthy clients and Pellicano employees had. Billionaire Alex Gores admitted using Pellicano to check up on his wife’s possible infidelity, and yes, admitted that he knew that Pellicano was tapping the phones. Who knew? Another big Hollywood private investigator who was there, John Nazarian told me “literally hundreds of people knew he used wiretaps.” John Nazarian also pointed out something else. “I come from a law enforcement background. He comes from an asshole background. The goal of being a private investigator is not to get your clients indicted.” That happened with Pellicano a number of times and with Andrew Stevens and other instances where no charges were filled, there is still the public humiliation, the tears at the stand, the embarrassment and disgrace.

A Fool for a Client

April 4th, Los Angeles: I meet co-defendant Abner Nicherie in the elevator up. He said hello and when I asked him how he was doing, he shrugged his shoulders. We both laughed. He introduced himself.

“Abner Nicherie.”

“Ah, Abner Nicherie. William Wheaton. I almost interviewed your brother at one point.”

“My condolences. It’s good, though, that it never happened.”

“Oh, you don’t like him.”

“Daniel is very unique.”

Just as well, since Daniel is serving time in federal prison, having plead guilty to wiretapping and $40 million in fraud in relation to the Pellicano case, although his guilty plea didn’t affect Abner’s plea. I was contacted while promoting my short story collection Hollywood Wiretapping by a source that had claimed to work on the case that I was able to trace as most likely having been working at the office of private investigator Jan B. Tucker for Daniel Nicherie. This was on Myspace.com. When Daniel was sentenced, my source offered to forward some questions to Daniel, “as to going in to the prison, that is not possible”. The problem was that at the time the audio book version of my short story collection Hollywood Wiretapping was being released by CTW Records, whose owner Mike Warden, was obsessed with using Myspace.com spam as a means of advertising both CTW products and his political views as a Ron Paul supporter and a member of the 9-11 Truth Movement. I had turned over my personal pages password to Mike Warden, my source complained about annoying promos, I found a very backhand e-mail sent to my source by Mike Warden, I was blocked, and that was that for Daniel.

I would have to say that Abner is, as other reporters mentioned, quite friendly, at least on the surface. He was seen around the trial with a woman with plastic surgery that would scare Michael Jackson that I thought was his girlfriend but later learned was actually his mother. He was funny and polite; if I didn’t know more about the case I would have said he’d be a good person to go have a drink with. The same cannot be said of Anthony Pellicano.

How bad an attorney for himself was Anthony Pellicano on the stand? First of all, under court instruction he must speak of himself in the third-person, and a lot of the time he forgets to do so- and sounds like an annoying fool. Secondly, in some cases his arrogance about his technical knowledge makes him self-incriminating. And thirdly, while cross-examining, you can detect how his alleged victims and those with whom he’s interacted are. His work as a private investigator involved substantial amounts of law, but that in no way makes him a lawyer. As in the cases of other high-profile clients such as Charles Manson, his follower Squeaky Fromme, Zacarias Moussaoui, the old adage about someone who acts as their own lawyer having a fool for a client still stands.

My favorite instance of his self-incrimination came during the cross-examination came when his former employee Wayne Nelson was on the stand. He asked Wayne Nelson whether it was true that Mr. Pellicano had designed Telesleuth Audio Forensics Sleuth Software and Telesleuth, Jr., to which Wayne Nelson responded by saying, “no, that was mostly Kevin’s work,” referring to co-defendant Kevin Kachikian. It might have been hard for the government to find a prosecutor who would do a better job of destroying Pellicano then Pellicano operating as his own attorney.

The Unassuming Mr. Kalta

The same day saw the dramatic testimony of George Kalta. George Kalta is a retired owner of a lighting company who was under investigation for sexually assaulting then 18-year old Laura Moreno in October 2001. After paying a $25,000 retainer on the case to Anthony Pellicano, and also developing a close friendship with Pellicano, The matter was dropped supposedly through a contact that Pellicano had through the DAs office. George Kalta then also was talked by Pellicano into hiring him to do some investigative work on his competitors, noting that “it’s hard to say no to him.” In February 2002, the case was re-opened and Pellicano was employed and paid $80,000 to wiretap and run background checks on Laura Moreno and her family, to find damaging information, such as, as Pellicano put it on tape, “she’s had three abortions and she’s on LSD.” Turmoil between George Kalta and Pellicano erupted when George Kalta switched his lawyer from Danny Davis to Lisa Abramson. The name Lisa Abramson was recognizable to me as the lawyer who had worked on the Phil Spector trial. She also defended the Menendez brothers. Asked what happened when he switched lawyers, George Kalta stated that Pellicano, “went ballistic”.

A tape of a conversation is played where Pellicano keeps insisting that George not sign a document on the case that would have given Leslie Abramson the rights to look over all Pellicano’s work on the case, yelling again and again “George you don’t want to do that!” and “George, you almost got me arrested!”

George Kalta eventually pleaded guilty in the assault matter, and also plead guilty in the question of wiretapping. And guess what? Surprise, surprise: evidence was presented that Pellicano was running unauthorized background checks on George Kalta. A curious act for man who ended his conversation with Kalta with the words, “love you, George.”

Pellicano’s cross-examination of Kalta was a mess. Pellicano serving as his own former client again and again for proof that the conversations on the phone played in trial mentioned wiretaps.

“Where on that tape is there any mention of phone boxes?” Pellicano asked, his face turning red with rage and his voice trembling with the phrase “phone boxes,” sounding crazed and dangerous.

Chris Rock Testifies


April 5th, Los Angeles:
One of the most amazing and glaring problems with modern American media was in full-effect with the coverage of the April 5th events at the Pellicano trial. Most of the coverage of the trial from that day in court was about comedian Chris Rock’s appearance in court. Chris Rock only testified for about 15 minutes. Pellicano, acting as his own lawyer, didn’t even cross-examine him. Earlier in the trial his fellow comedian Gary Shandling had famously made jokes on the witness stand, but Rock was clearly very, very nervous, in sharp contrast to his flamboyant and controversial comedic persona.

What had happened was this: when separated from his wife, he had a brief affair with a woman named Monika Zsibrita—the sister of Timea Zsibrita who also testified in the Pellicano trial. Monika Zsibrita attempted to hit Chris Rock with a paternity suit. The child was found not to be his. On advice of his lawyers, he hired Anthony Pellicano to work the case. A brief excerpt of a phone call, the entirety of which is available online, between Rock and Pellicano, Chris Rock and Anthony Pellicano discuss a police report that Anthony Pellicano is “not supposed to have” that Pellicano says was a report of a rape made about him by Monika Zsibrita. No charges were ever filled and in the paternity matter, Rock was proven not to be the father. As Rock said, “I come her today as a free man” and as he also pointed out “a person that claimed that she had child that was not mine came after me demanding large sums of money.” The federal government was not after Chris Rock in any way. He was used to collaborate a few facts and identify some information on one of the overheads pertaining to Arneson’s alleged DMV record searches.

That’s it, and he was free to go. Much of the day’s testimony had to do with the elaborate chain of events surrounding the Nicherie brothers and their conflict with Ami Shafrir. A brief appearance by a celebrity totally eclipsed the almost unreported but absolutely explosive testimony of Sarit Shafrir.

A Dangerous Game- the Testimony of Sarit Shafrir

The crucial testimony of the day came from Sarit Shafrir, there can be no question. Laura Moreno testified briefly and identified yet more of the DMV record checks attributed to Mark Arneson. Pamela Miller, the former nanny of Taylor Thompson, one of the most wealthy women in Canada, about phone tapping and DMV background searches on her and her family allegedly conducted by Pellicano in relation to a legal dispute with Taylor Thompson surrounding deposition she gave in a paternity battle with Taylor Thompson’s ex-husband. After Pamela Miller’s testimony, during break, she spoke with a number of reporters about being diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and having a difficult time finding work and functioning after the whole thing.

Then there is the highly sophisticated testimony of Sarit Shafrir, the ex-wife of Ami Shafrir, the man that Daniel Nicherie has pleaded guilty to wiretapping and defrauding of $40,000,000.

The premise of this highly involved story begins with a divorce in the year 2000. This divorce was apparently so contentious that authorities requested both parties turn over their firearms. During this period, Sarit Shafrir testified that she meet Daniel and Abner Nicherie. “Did you become romantically involved with one of the Nicherie brothers?” asked a federal prosecutor to which Sarit said “Yes.” “Which one?” “Abner.” Also during this time period the Nicherie brothers were engaged in legal dispute with Ami Shafrir.

Sarit Shafrir testified that the Nicherie brothers “took complete control of every aspect of my life.” They even lived with her and controlled her business dealings and her personal life, she claimed. She claims they taught her how to lie and how to forge signatures.

At this time, our friend Mr. Pellicano comes into play, although Sarit Shafrir didn’t interact with him until much later. “They told me he was an intense player, that it is a dangerous game.” Sarit stated.

What she was told about the wiretapping gave some of the most vivid descriptions of the technology involved during the trial. She mentioned that the wiretapping was said to be conducted using recording devices placed near phones boxes which had to be replaced every forty-eight hours. She spoke of them informing her of a graph on Pellicano’s computer that could determine volume in the calls so that they could tell “if Ami was screaming really loud”.

There was a problem, though. While Pellicano did not generally allow his clients to listen to wiretapped conversations, there was here a language barrier. Many of Ami Shafrir’s conversations were in Hebrew, and so the Nicherie brothers acted as translators.

Unbeknownst to Pellicano, the brothers Nicherie snuck cell phones on their persons while being played the wiretaps. Sarit Shafrir was “freaked out” by this, which would not deter the gleeful Nicherie brothers who would she said would tell her things like “You gotta hear this” and even left snippets of the wiretapped conversations on her answering machine. Ironically, Former LAPD officer Craig Stevens later testified that Ami Shafrir was also a Pellicano client.

Lawrence Semenza, the defense attorney for Abner who was taking notes during this section of the trail, went into lengthy cross-examination, beginning by bringing up the question of what kind of business the Shafrirs owned. It was a business involved in the billing and operation of adult phone services and astrology or psychic hotlines.

Semenza brought up the question of double billing, a practice which Daniel Nicherie on a web-page accused Ami Shafrir of taking part of in which parties are billed later for charges they already paid for discretely as to avoid notice on their phone bills. Credit card fraud is another activity that Semenza brought up and Sarit Shafrir testified that one of Ami’s employees had actually admitted Ami was pulling credit card fraud. My understanding of the Shafrir/Nicherie conflict is that it may have been a sort of white-collar crime war, in which the parties involved can’t always be redacted into simple definitions of good and evil. However, under re-direct examination, when asked about accusations that Ami Shafrir had molested their daughter, Sharit said “he told my daughter if she wants to protect mommy, she needs to say that daddy touched her,”, demonstrating how out of control “the dangerous game” had become.

Michael Ovitz, Anita Busch, and a Quick Paul Barresi Subplot

April 10th, Loa Angeles: The climax, of sorts, to the trial was the testimony of Anita Busch, which followed and was closely tied to the testimony of former Disney CEO Michael Ovitz.

In 2002, Michael Ovitz’s company was in turmoil, he testified. A series of articles where published claiming, that his company AMG, was going through financial hardships. Many of these where penned by the journalist Anita Busch. Michael Ovitz claimed that the company was not in financial hardships, these articles seemed to make financial problems. Solution? Call in Anthony Pellicano, which prompted a telephone call in which Mike Ovitz starts out by stating, “ I need to speak to you.” To which Pellicano on tape responds, “Listen, my friend Bert Fields loves you and I love you.” At which point Mr. Pellicano was retained to find out embarrassing information about Anita Busch, which, Ovitz testified, there was none of.

I’ll share what I thought about this as I sat there. I thought, “who cares?” It can’t be stressed too many times that Pellicano was called in for reasons that seem incredibly petty. Michael Ovitz is a very wealthy man and would still be even if reporters reported drops in income periodically.

Ovitz, of course, claimed he had no knowledge of illegal wiretaps or police database searches. He is, however, in the process of being sued by Anita Busch over alleged threats being made against her life.

The Ovitz testimony was difficult to follow because an individual I recognized to be Paul Barresi was talking to some woman. Barresi worked for Pellicano and also a figure in the gay porn world. A lot of the more provocative allegations about Tom in the wiretapping case I’ve read are available on-line in an excerpt from a book that Barresi was supposedly writing entitled “Pellicano’s Enforcer.” The excerpt I had read describes a situation in which a male prostitute called Big Read approaches Barresi about having had Tom Cruise as a client, but Barresi informs Bertie Fields and Pellicano about Big Read, who then suspects his phone is tapped and that he is being followed, possibly by Scientologists. Outside during break, I talked with Barresi briefly but he said he wasn’t interested in talking to media people yet and when I mentioned the excerpt online he even asked, “Are you sure?”

After that Anita Busch took the stand. One morning in late 2002, Anita Busch found her car window smashed, with a frying pan and a dead fish in it, a rose and a sign that said stop, she testified. The bomb squad was called in to clear off the mess.

Next, she found her computer information destroyed by a computer virus. By strange coincidence (?) my own computer broke the same day as her testimony. She testified that all her computer files were destroyed by a virus. She testified that also a vehicle with two men in it came rushing forward and two men came out and made the gesture to keep quite.

This is where Pellicano acting as his own lawyer totally self-destructed. Mark Arneson’s lawyer Chad Hummel pointed out that Anita Busch was also writing a story on Steven Segal’s ties to the mafia and the Gambino crime family, suggesting the attack may have had absolutely nothing to do with Pellicano. First, though subject to many calls of objection from the prosecutors, Pellicano questioned Anita Busch about a possible book on the event she was writing. Anita Busch said there wouldn’t be any book. Then under cross-examination, Pellicano made Anita Busch, clearly in a state of terror, go over every detail of the incident with the car again and again. What angle the vehicle was coming from, what color the vehicle was, and the court could visibly see Anita Busch go through some kind of post-traumatic stress incident right there on the witness stand. Pellicano continued to torture her in this way regardless, displaying the very real fear she experienced and the assurance she had that it was he who was responsible.

Prosecution Rests

April 11th, Los Angeles: I didn’t intend to stay for the defense. A reporter for the Times, I believe it was Carla Hall asked me about as she and I chatted with John Nazarian.

“Small budget, small magazine. Also, I think the verdict would appear fairly clear.”

Nazarian and the Los Angles Time reporter cracked up.

What the Stallone matter was about was this. Planet Hollywood is the restaurant chain owned by Stallone and others. It is actually still around but it has had a history of bankruptcy. Stallone ended up in litigation against his business manager Kenneth Starr (not the Kenneth Star in the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal) over the matter. Ken Starr was represented by guess who? Why it’s Bertie Fields, esq. again. Wow, for someone who had no knowledge of illegal wiretapping Bertie Fields sure has a lot of former clients in this case!

So Stallone wasn’t called but his lawyer Lawrence Nagler was. Nagler testified after a tape was played with Pellicano talking to Kenneth Starr about Stallone’s camps legal strategy and even lists off what Nagler testified was his salary, $15,000 a month plus 20% of the take. On the tape he also tells star that Stallone and team are trying to get signed affidavit from a woman that was a former Starr employee about him.

“That is exactly what we where trying to do,” Testified Nagler.

And about the salary? Pellicano was exactly right about that, too. I have read in the press that the Pellicano prosecution rested on the matter of Stallone- this is wrong it rested with a tape of a phone call involving the case of Komi Hass. A detective who had worked on the case testified that Komi Hass was charged with Manslaughter and distributing a narcotic (ecstasy and GHB) in the death of Sandra Rodriguez, who fell from a balcony. The last thing I heard is a tape of Pellicano talking to Mark Arneson. Mark Arneson gives Pellicano the good word. It’s a DUI. She was on probation when she died. Pellicano is pleased, and then gives off a list of other numbers for Arneson presumably to check and he just lists of numbers. And on that Kevin Lally said, “The prosecution rests”.

Sabotage!

April 23rd, New York: It appears that someone may have sabotaged my computer. The reason I suspect this is the case is because my computer was damaged while I was in Los Angeles and it is possible that someone could have gotten into the RUV trailer in Alhambra that I was staying in while working on the Pellicano trial. I thought nothing off it at the time- or almost nothing. After returning from some brief meetings with Reviewer Rob in San Diego, I went back to New York the workers at Mickey’s Hook Up in Williamsburg found still liquid within the computer and I don’t remember any spills near the computer or anything at all like that. The tech workers at the shop took photos of the wreck of the computer for legal purposes. I wouldn’t say for certain it was intentional, but it could very well be.

Conclusion


April 25th, New York:
In response to news arriving from the frontline of a possible mistrial in the case- it has been said that the government introduced a bankruptcy filling attributed to Mark Arneson that was, perhaps the work of the witness Phyllis Miller, who testified she was in the process of re-financing Arneson’s home, but indeed, may have incriminated herself and her husband for fraud and possibly perjury on the stand. Chad Hummel, of course, called for a mistrial. Chad Hummel is formidable. Pellicano, in such a case, wouldn’t be out of the fire because he must be tried separately in the case involving lawyer Terry Christensen and the custody dispute of Kirk and Lisa Kerkorian, As Terry Christensen was able to have his separated from the current racketeering trial, as he had little to do with the general operation of Pellicano’s alleged racket. Pellicano will still probably end up in prison. The tape of Pellicano and Christensen talking speaks for itself. Pellicano is a very dangerous man, the longer he is separated from society, the better. There is, however, the glaring double standard that so many people were granted use immunity in the case and were charged with nothing, being left free to go.

After all, Pellicano was only doing his job.

~WW

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