The Sin Eater: Anthony Pellicano

In the 80s, 90s, and early aughts, Anthony Pellicano was the go-to guy in Hollywood if you had any kind of problem. He didn't have an issue with operating outside the law, loved to allude to mafia ties, and always got the job done -- quick. But as always, things fall apart. This flashy private eye wound up in prison. But even being an ex-felon couldn't stop him from making deals and "eating the sin" of his clients.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zaren Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (00:04):
You know it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Oh my god, I'm so glad you asked me that
ten gallon hats?

Speaker 3 (00:09):
Yes, totalous, right?

Speaker 2 (00:11):
If you poured water in them or like beer or
champagne or whatever, do you know how much it would hold?
How much liquid?

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Ten gallons?

Speaker 2 (00:18):
No, one gallon?

Speaker 3 (00:19):
One gallon?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah. So people are always like, wait a minute, how much?
Why is it called a ten gallon hat if it
only holds one gallon of liquid, like, you know, like
smart alec kids like me. Well, it turns out there's
a good guard darn reason for that. The term is
actually galloon, and it refers to a certain kind of braid,
like a braided band that used to be popular, and
they were worn by the Mexican baccaros around their hat

(00:43):
and you could fit ten galloons on that hat. So
it was a ten galloon hat. The Americans and then
the English speakers of the region they got it. They're like,
you got a ten gallon hat there for me, partner,
you hurt me, Pedro, give me one of them hats? Icked?
How of that look on you? Now? These braided ribbons,
they are called the galloon. So the next time you
hear it, if you really want to be the smart

(01:04):
out kid, you can crack and be like, actually it's
a ten galloon hat. So there you go. Ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Huh, you're very ridiculous. Uh do you want to know
what else is ridiculous?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Girl? I came here for it?

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Wire Tapping. What this is? Ridiculous Crime A podcast about

(01:38):
absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety
nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Damn
right now, you just hit us on Tuesday with a
big Hollywood story.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah I did.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
I'm going to hit you back. Oh really? Oh yeah,
we're going back to tinseltown.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Bring you baby.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
I want to read a quote to you from today's
Fellow Sure quote. You have to be honorable, you have
to keep your word, and you have to be loyal.
Were there things that I did that other people find
unreasonable or despicable or whatever adjective you want to use.
I don't care. I care about that person who entrusted
me to solve their problem. That's who I care about.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Oh yeah, swifty Lazar, Now who is this?

Speaker 3 (02:20):
So this is a man with a code, and that
code is that he doesn't give a tinker's damn about
what is legal and what is illegal.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Oh so one of our people, one.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Of our people. He had a client and he would
do whatever he needed to do in order to meet
or exceed that client's request.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Okay, this is not Swifty Lazarre.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
No, this man Anthony Pelicano.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Oh my god, Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yes, he was born Anthony Joseph Pelican l Junior in
nineteen forty four in Cicero, Illinois, al Capone's hometown.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Oh yeah, gangster rich, and it's something that he liked
to point out, of course.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
So he had these Sicilians Sicilian grand parents. When they
came over, they americanized the family name to Pelican or
Pelican in order to get by in their new homeland.
But Anthony true to his roots. When he became an adult,
he went back to the original Pelicano.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
He's a compone's not going to trust anybody named Pelican
Pelicano exactly.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
So he joins the US Army Signal Corps. When they
asked him what he wanted to do, he said electronics
because he saw a magazine in the recruiter's office with
that on it.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Good answer.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah, he trained to be a cryptographer because like when
he signed up, he said he was super inte electronics.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
I'm smart.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
He got stationed in France, and that meant no Vietnam, people.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Who like electronics don't usually get shot in the army, exactly.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Smart move. So when he got out of.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
The army, he, I mean when you say it in
the draft, not like people who like electronics, A lot
of them on the front line. You're like, I like electronics.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Arrein Yeah, I don't mean that when you enlist.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, tell them.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
So he gets out of the army, he gets a
job in collections, and he's tracking down those who haven't
paid their bills. And then that takes us to nineteen
sixty nine.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
He becomes not for the mob, he's actually legit collect
He's still wearing.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
That suit exactly, and so in nineteen sixty nine he
decides to officially become a private investigator. Have you ever
met a PI?

Speaker 4 (04:08):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, I have a friend of a PI. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
I knew someone who transitioned out of that gig. Yeah,
And she said it was lots of like sitting in
the car in the car, divorce work, taking pictures of
people having affairs.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, totally. That still is the thing. Like from the
nineteen thirties on, it's been the same thing. Sit in
a car, eat fast food, take photos you wish you
didn't have to take.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Exactly. So Pelicano he sees all these ads in the
Yellow Pages for pis and he figures he should like
start out at an established office. So this is what
he told La Times.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
So I called the biggest ad in there, and I said, listen,
I'm the best skip tracer there is. I want to
do all your work. Give me your hardest case. They'd
been looking for this missing little girl for six weeks
and I found her in two days. How with intelligence, logic,
common sense, a tremendous amount of imagination and an acute perception.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
So he really did. Yeah, he didn't just go down
and like like bribe the right peo people.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
He knows how to do these things. A character.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
He was a good detective. Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
According to Vanity Fair quote, he drove a large linking continental,
sealed his letters with monogrammed wax, and hung samurai swords
in his office. At various times. He gave his employees
and family members necklaces bearing a small golden horn he
said contained a strand of his hair.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
Much of his early work involved missing persons. A nineteen
seventy eight article claimed that he had found three nine
hundred and sixty eight of them, which works out to
about four hundred and forty people a year, more than
one a day.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
So I think he used to have an office on
Sunset Boulevard.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
He did.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
We'll get to that, okay. I remember people have pointed
it out, like they'd be like, you know, that's pelicanas exactly.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
So seventy seven he made a splash by finding the
stolen remains of Mike Todd, Elizabeth Taylor's third husband. Oh wow,
so remains stolen? Tell me more?

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, he must.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Mike Todd died in a plane crash and he was
buried in a Chicago cemetery and what was left of
him was quote basically a handful of dust and what
was likely part of a nylon seat belt.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
He was buried with a seat belt. This is also
his returnal remains.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yes, it's just a little bit of stuff that's a
bag and they put it in a rubber bag and
then tucked it into a coffin and buried it.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
They didn't even get like a little Crown royal bag
because apparently not.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
I don't know why I rubbed it. So around June
twenty fifth, nineteen seventy seven, his grave is found all
dug up, the coffin empty. Cops are on the case,
but they're like they're coming up empty empty as the coffins.
Eric Yes, So June twenty eighth, Pelicano, he calls Chicago's
Channel two news and he says, hey, pal listen, I
got a tip about where to find what's left of

(06:40):
all Mike Todd oh, and so Channel two they're all
about it. They send out a news team and plus
then they tell the cops, which you know is the
right thing to do. So everyone gets to the graveyard
and it is on Pelicano. He stands in front of
all the gathered folks and he reads out loud the
instructions that he had received from his tipster. And so
then he starts walking the number of paces indicated.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
There's numbered paces. He walks like a treasure map.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yeah. He gets around seventy five yards away from the
grave and he stops. I found it, he yells, Oh
my god. Yeah, the detectives come running over and there's
Pelicano pointing at a pile of leaves. Now, the cops
had already searched this pile, tim So he reaches in
and he pulls out a rubber bag. What how on
earth did he get the tip about the bag?

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Do you want my real answer?

Speaker 4 (07:27):
No?

Speaker 3 (07:27):
So he told the Chicago Sun Times that the tip
came from someone likely acting on behalf of the thieves. Quote.
I think they felt they made a tremendous mistake. He said.
The information was volunteered to me. I'm a public figure
and I've handled many many missing figures.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
They could feel my heat on the collar. I was
in hot pursuits. They were like, can't mister Pelicano.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
But that's not all, he says. That wasn't all other
tipsters and sources they reach out to him. Fill him
in on the motive.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Oh multiple, Okay.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Well, supposedly the thieves were looking for a ten carrot
diamond ring in the bag of ass. Well, apparently that
was his wedding ring's wedding ring, and it survived the
plane craft and they.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Thought Elizabeth would just put it in there as.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
Like a right well, Liz had it though, of.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Course she loves the rings and diamonds in particular.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Exactly, so everyone figured it was probably the Chicago mob
behind the whole thing. Oh okay, but the big rumor
was that Pelicano was behind the whole thing for publicity,
and that that publicity worked though, yeah, exactly. So he
starts appearing as an expert witness for the government things.
Oh yeah, he'd gone through this thing where he because

(08:31):
of the finding Mike Todd's remains, and he winds up
on some like police board. But then sure in Chicago, Yeah,
but then he embezzles money or he does something and
he gets kicked off. So then he starts appearing as
this expert witness.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
It is like at the end of the Richard Daly
era Chicago Sun.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
So his particular expertise was deciphering tape recordings, okay, oh yeah,
And in nineteen seventy four he was hired by the
lawyers for Nixon's secretary. What they wanted him to recover
that eighteen year gap in the water.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
And to be able to prove that it had been
done correctly.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, and so he said he couldn't recover them and
he thought that the erasure was unintentional. Oh yeah, sure, buddy.
So you know he did all sorts of other stuff.
Where next, though, Where next? Elizabeth, when in doubt, moved
to La Of course.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
That's if you shake all like the country loose, that's
throw all the loose nuts goots exactly.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
He goes to Los Angeles Old Tinseltown nineteen eighty two.
He boosted his profile by hinting that he had connections
to the mob.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
A good one. They love that there, anti.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
Law enforcement, he played both sides.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
They also love that there.

Speaker 5 (09:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
So now in Hollywood, Pelicano got this really sweet gig
with lawyer Howard Weisman. Oh yeah, and Whitesman had a
client who was accused of selling coke to finance his business. Ah,
that client, John DeLorean, Yes, there you go. So there's
a tape in which Delaurian referred to a suitcase of
cocaine as quote better than gold.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
And so maybe he was really good.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
He was just you know, in the tape, he's meeting
with these people that he thinks are investors, but they're
actually cops. And DeLorean then, when the whole thing goes down,
claims that he was being set up. So Pelicano, his
job is to provide that yes, to.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Prove yes, indeed set up okay, Yeah, And.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
So he showed the jury that the tapes had been altered,
these tapes where he's calling it, you know, better than gold. Yeah,
And as a result, Delorean's acquitted.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
He got Delarean off.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yes. Wow, this was the biggest boost yet for Pelicanos
for a while.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
So he was in a town with a lot of
people need to get off of right.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
And he goes up against the Feds and wins. Everyone
wants his services.

Speaker 4 (10:33):
Now.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
They would say, they're like, they have a ninety nine
percent prosecution right now, you beat the Feds, that's yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
So he's in the big time, of course, and he
made sure to charge his clients accordingly. He charged a
standard twenty five thousand dollars retainer that was like the baseline. Yeah,
and on top of that, he had other fees that
you know, the price of his services could go into
the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah. The twenty five thousand is so he would answer
your call it three.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
As exactly exactly. So around nineteen eighty nine, he gets
hired by a high profile attorney named Bert Fields. Yes, so,
Bert Charlie Burt nine hundred dollars an hour at the time.
That's like twenty two hundred dollars an hour now, insane.
Ken Aletta wrote for The New Yorker that Fields and
Fields passed away in twenty twenty two at the age

(11:17):
of ninety three. He wrote about Fields quote has represented
almost every studio head and some of Hollywood's biggest stars,
including Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson, Warren Batty, The Beatles, John Travolta, Madonna,
Mike Nichols, and Dustin Hoffman. He has also represented Rupert Murdoch,
the chairman of News Corp. And Steven Spielberg, David Geffen

(11:38):
Jeffrey Katzenberg, the co founders of DreamWorks SKG. The unwritten
calling card says, not wholly accurately, Bert Fields has never
lost a court case.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
And he wears great suits.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yes he did, he did rip so. Pelicano's first gig
with Fields was for a wildly Hollywood character one accused
of sexual harassment by a former a song as.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Old as Time. Oh, yes, very Hollywood.

Speaker 3 (12:03):
But this was none other than producer Don Simpson. Oh no, Simpson,
producer of Top Go flash Dance.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
I told you my friend that was his, Like, I
know so much about him because he would tell me
these stories, you know, one time Don Simpson, Like I
don't it was like his like one time at band camp.
But it's like one time Don Simpson. I'm like, so we've.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Talked about it before. He was completely out of control.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Watch terrible person, just Si always hanging out with piles
of cocaine and like sex workers who just had to
be there. Like nobody who wasn't paid wanted to be
around him.

Speaker 6 (12:32):
But his serious Hollywood power player. Oh totally but completely
off the making one hundred million dollar movies. Everyone just
like gave him cart block because he wrote he would
basically go out there and make a movie and you
know it was gonna be that year is one of
the big Temple hits three hundred million, four hundred and
five or whatever it was. He'd be like, oh wow,
Days of Thunder, all those movies that boom.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Yeah. So his assistant alleged that Simpson quote snorted cocaine
in the office, ordered her to line up dates with prostitutes,
exposed her to pornographic material, and cussed her out.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
That sounds like they have yes, sounds like a Monday.
Son's having a good Monday?

Speaker 3 (13:06):
Is that New Yorker piece? It says quote Pelicano uncovered
information about Simpson's accuser, including the fact that she had
hired a mail stripper for a party. Instead of addressing
her charges, Fields questioned her character and credibility, and the
revelations helped to get the case dismissed.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
I love it gross the character assassination in American criminals
like courtrooms.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
Oh and Pelicano it seems yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
I'm like, does nobody ever think, like, wait a minute,
this is just like on Law and Order, And I
hate it when they do it there anyway. But on so.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Pelicano he had other stuff to do with Don Simpson.
In August of nineteen ninety five, the doctor who was
supposedly working with Simpson to address his addictions was found dead.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
And I'm not laughing about him dying. I'm like, the
man who's trying to help you with your addiction dies,
have a drug lasted, the guy who's been hired to
help you with this stuff.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah, and so Pelicano's called before the cops. So he
gets there toxicology though, like he cleans up the scene.
Toxicology eventually revealed that the doctor had a whole messa
drugs in the system. Oh so who knows what else?

Speaker 6 (14:07):
Pelican he was helping him by doing the drugs again,
I'll do all your drugs.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
I would do the cocaine faster.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
See the same thing happened in nineteen ninety six. The
next year, when Simpson himself was found dead of an overdose,
Pelicano was called before the police.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Tragic day for my friend.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Exactly.

Speaker 4 (14:20):
So.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
Another client of Field's former beatle, George Harrison, he had
a problem.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
I wouldn't have expected that.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
He was getting threatening letters. And that's when he brought
that security expert Gavin de Becker into his life. So
Fields hired Pelicano again, and Pelicano found the letter writer
within two days, and the letters immediately stopped.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Damn, he is good. I gotta do that.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
So this is why Fields work, right, So Fields told
the New Yorker quote, he came up with stuff that
other people didn't. He did that over and over again.
He was just better. I don't know how he did it.
It certainly wasn't wire tapping. So like wire tapping, why
would you say.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
Why did you who brought tapping?

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Who said that? But wiretapping is the tip of the
iceberg on this, it's the good stuff, wiretapping or not.
Fields was all in with Pelicano. So, according to Pelicano's employees,
per Vanity, fair Fields quote brought Pelicano into DreamWorks Animation
CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg's litigation with Disney's Michael Eisner.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Oh, a huge case.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
Tom Cruise's defense against a gay porn stars sex allegations.
Another big one, Imagine Entertainment suit against Mike Myers, but
a few totally.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
I forgot about the Mike Myers.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
You liked the late great Gary Shandling, right, Oh?

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, love him.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
He was a comic genius, bit of a tortured.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Soul, totally but a good dude, totally good.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
Yes, Since I can't think of an occasion when you
hadn't at least heard of something, most likely even no
facts and details about, especially when it comes to Hollywood
stuff or obscure Eastern European Western Asian ancient history. I
think you've heard about the beef between Gary Shandling and
his manager Brad Gray.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
I'm familiar.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
He yeah, So let's take a break when we come back,
I'll tell you all about it and how Anthony Pelicano
factors into it.

Speaker 5 (16:07):
Yes, welcome, Hey.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
So when we last spoke, I was telling you about
Gary Shandling and Brad Gray.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Correct.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
So Gray he started out in Hollywood as a talent
manager and from there he added in work as a producer.
His first gig was in nineteen eighty six with It's
Gary Shandling Show on Showtime. This is first producing thing,
so Shanling. In that show, he played a stand up
comic who also knows that he's a TV character, so
he like interacts with the studio audience and he messes

(16:53):
with storylines. Huge hit, critically acclaimed, ran for four seasons,
and then it went into syndication on Fox. So the
show led to Shanling getting another show on HBO, The
Larry Sanders Show. That's another success. But in nineteen ninety
eight there was a falling out. Shanling sued Gray for
one hundred million dollars. He said that Gray cheated him

(17:14):
out of the money he made from the Larry Sanders Show.
Gray hired Bert Fields and countersued. Yeah. So Fields, of
course brings in Anthony Pelicano. Pelicano had a cop run
unauthorized background checks on Shanling, a former girlfriend of his,
his personal assistant, his business manager, and actor Kevin Nelan,

(17:36):
who was like one of Shanling's best friends. So he
also wiretapped every single one of those people. Both lawsuits
were settled, keeping it out of court, but it started
two things, the open secret of Pelicano's illegal wiretapping and
Pelicano's close friendship with Gray. So Pelicano he once gave

(17:56):
Gray an eight inch silver plated switchblade as a gift,
and the two of them were supposedly working on an
HBO show together all of the Sopranos about the Yeah,
the Sopranos, but when that fell through, one of the
writers for that project went on to develop a little
show called Ray Donovan about a ruthless Hollywood fixer. Yeah

(18:17):
sounds awful familiar.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
I wonder where they got the material.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
I know some inspiration. So Pelicano, he's obsessed with the
mob in the Sopranos. His ex wife Kat said that
Pelicano watched The Sopranos every Sunday night, quote like he
was going to church.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Is so into it.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
The whole music in his Office was the soundtrack for
The Godfather. Like the score for the film, he wore.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Sunglasses eighteen times.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
I know you're like waiting for you. He wore sunglasses
that were an exact copy of the ones Pacino wore
in Godfather Took. His son, Luca, was named after Luca Brozi,
don Corleone's favorite assassin.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Who was an actual mob enforcer, and then got brought
on because he was a what do you called a
I think at that point a bodyguard for one of
the families. And they're like they'd worked out, like you
got to hire some of our guys.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
You know what. He sleeps with the fishes, dude, Luk.
So that SAMEX wife Kat one of many I've said.
Quote there were times when he would make my children
kiss his hand like he was the Godfather. He started
to think he was Don corleon Oh no, yea. So
he kept a baseball bat in the trunk of his car,
and he threatened people.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
With it, so that O and Pelicans really jumping out
for him.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
He once told a reporter quote, guys who with me,
get to meet my buddy here talking about the bat bat.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, his old friend Louisville exactly mister slugger.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
He was like deep into the whole Omerta.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
Oh yeah, coda silence, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Loyalty silence. He had his staff abide by Omerta.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
How was he They do it with a ritual, like
making them like they come into the office on on
Tuesday night, we're doing.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
We're going to burn a prayer card. I don't know.
He called himself the sin eater, Oh God, that he
absorbed his clients sins and wrongdoings and made them disappear
by making them his. So let's circle back though to wire.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
I guess that's better than being the death eater, you know, So.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
Wire Wire, what I didn't say? He was a wire tapper.
In nineteen ninety five, he got himself a computer programmer
named Kevin Katchikian, and he had Kachiki and develop a
system to intercept telephone. Yeah right, gotta love them. The
two of them called this system that he developed teleslouth okay,

(20:31):
and they even applied for a trademark on it. Nothing
ever came of that, but Kachikian developed another program that
went along with Telesleuth called Forensic Audio Sleuth Okay. This
one analyzed and enhanced audio recordings.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, so I'm sure they kind of used similar with
the use now with all the like the passes where
they do a past and they can do gain exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
So he he creates one Pelicano then bribed two Pacific
Bell employees to rig poes so that Teleslouth could listen
in on the calls.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
We need material.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
Tell us the interception was done at the level of
the phone company. It wasn't done in the home.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
He wasn't wiring there, he wasn't breaking in.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
He's not there's no home break in. If he's sweep
for bugs, you're not gonna find any, tell us. Luth
then link the calls to Pelicanos office computers and.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
It says like someone else is on this line.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
What the hell they'd hear like little clicks and whatever. So,
since the computers could only wire tap recordings from their
own area code in order, like so he's in three
ten and he's able to tap three tens. So but
for him to get calls in three two, three two
on three six, two, six, eight, one eight, all the
other south Land area codes, he had to rent an
apartment in each area code where he could establish a

(21:41):
computer and a hard drive. Yeah, exactly. All of this
was totally illegal. Oh yeah, totally because in California, all
parties to any confidential conversation have to give their consent
to be recorded.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
You cannot record a person on the phone in California.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
That's in most places it's two parties and it's one,
but that means that one of the already has to
be the originator of the recording this. You know, he's
just snoop and it's illegal everywhere. So everyone suspected that
Pelicano was tapping phones somehow, and he most certainly was,
and it was getting him results. The La Times called
him the least private private eye in town. So he

(22:18):
got He got hired by Tom Cruise during his divorce
from Nicole Edman. Kidman had her phone swept for bugs
all the time, and she knew about Pelicano, and the
sweeps always came up empty because the tap wasn't on
her phone. When she was talking to friends, she would joke, quote, Tom,
are you listening? Am I saying what you want me
to say? And Pelicano. Pelicano also had a direct line

(22:40):
to the National Inquirer, and so he would leak stories
to them all the time, and he did that a
lot for Tom Cruise against Nicole Kidman.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
He had tons of celebrity clients. Jerry Springer used him
to find out how he was videotaped in a threesome
with porn star Kendrid Jade and her stepmom.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
What yeah, I read that and what I don't sentence?

Speaker 3 (23:01):
I say what, but I want it to stop right there.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
One time mayor of Cleveland.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Exactly, Chris Rock came to Pelicano when he was facing
a paternity lawsuit filed by a Hungarian model. The tapes
of their conversations are amazing.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Wait, the Hungarian model Chris.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
Rock no Pelicano and Rock Pelicano calls Rock honey. He's like, listen, honey,
I'm gonna yeah. Chris Rock is just like exasperated to
the whole thing. They have a very graphic conversation about
like how this could have happened. Okay, Yeah, it's amazing.
There's a tape of him talking to Courtney Love and
he calls her a baby and he postures about like
his strong arm tactics.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
So Pelicanna just calls everybody baby baby honey.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah, exactly. He tells her quote, if you come to me,
that's the end of that. I'm an old style Sicilian.
I only go one way. I'm very heavy hand in. Honey,
love super into it.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
She's like yeah, oh, She's like perfect, I need a
hammer just like you.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
And that's the thing, Like there's an appeal to a
fixer like that, this is what you want from a
someone can just make your make your problems go way. Yeah,
And there's a certain excitement, like a romance of the
notion that, like this person is ruthless and they'll use
muscle and intimidation to do your bidding.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Mmmm. And also I think though, if you go one
step past that, you want the Ray Donovan, which is
discretion is the better part of valor. So not only
will he like crack heads or like make people cried
and say I take back what I said or whatever,
but also no one ever.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
Hears, oh never knows exactly. But see there's always another
side to it. That's like those on the receiving ends.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Oh yeah, no, it's terrible for them. This is not
anything we would know or recognize as justice.

Speaker 4 (24:33):
No.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
His most infamous case was in nineteen ninety three, Bert
Field's and a team of lawyers. They brought Pelicano in
to help defend Michael Jackson from child molestation charges.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, this is where they attack the family.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
Pelicano signs on, but he said he would only do
so if Jackson wasn't guilty. I will only work for
him if he didn't do this, okay. And then he
said he told Jackson, quote, you don't have to worry
about or lawyers. If I find out anything, I will
you over. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Damn. Does he know that Michael Jackson was always alleged
to be an actual cryp, like like an honorary crypt
he only wore blue. He was like, the rumors. I
don't know the truth of it, but the rumors, the
alleged rumors is that Michael Jackson's affiliated, like deep with
the crips.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
I am in love with that rumors. So you know, Pelicano.
He threatens Jackson, if you really did this, it's over
for you.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
It's curtains for you, okay.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
And then he turns around. He goes after the family
of the thirteen year old accuser and digs up any
dirt he can find. He then organized a CNN interview
with Wade robson a kid who was in that Jackson sphere.
He later goes on to be like a choreographer, I think,
but at the time he's like a tween staying at
Neverland Ranch. And in the interview, Robson he just like
vehemently denies that anything like that had happened. He says,

(25:56):
he slept in the same bed as Jackson, but absolutely nothing.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Under story of like, I vehemently denied these allegations because
nothing like that happened for me.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Right, But then years later Robson goes public says, yes,
I was actually sexually abused by Jackson.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Oh god, yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
Robson's mother said that she was coerced by Pelicano into
doing the CNN interview that absolved Jackson of all guilt.
So Jackson in the original family they have eventually settled.
Pelicano he got a pretty penny out of the world.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
How pretty this penny?

Speaker 3 (26:24):
A million dollar fee, a million dollar bonus, and a
Mercedes Benz convertible. Wow, throwing a Benz.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
He's throwing like a picture of a sign, picture of bubbles,
the chimp.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Probably handprint on it, exactly. So Pelicano later said though
that he fired Jackson as a client. What he said
he fired him because he said he apparently he found
out about other even darker truths about Jackson. Pelicano said, quote,
he did something far worse to young boys than molest them,

(26:53):
which I don't.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Want to know what that could be. I don't even
want to imagine.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
And Pelicano was like, I'm out of here, which he
kind of he was supposed to be out of earlier.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
And also he was supposed to f people up if
he found out that he was guilty. He did not
live up to his word.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Mister Omerta, who's not alive right now?

Speaker 6 (27:06):
Oh, I just I just a joke because I'm not
I'm not accused that doctor.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Wasn't just so you know, absent minded or whatever.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
But here's the thing, like, uh, Pelicano, he claimed that
he was offered five hundred thousand dollars to tell the
story of whatever darker deeds, but he refused why. I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
I thought he loved money and all that.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
I don't know. So Pelicano, he just keeps wire tapping
and intimidating along.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
She was like, I got wire tapping to do. I
don't have time to.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
Talk, so busy about this. So there's a Canadian newspaper
publishing era named Taylor Thompson. She hired Pelicano to assist
her in a custody battle.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Okay, like Toronto Star paper.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
Yes, yes, all the like yeah, the bigness. So Thompson
was rich, violently rich, as I like. Oh yes, her
family is worth fourteen point nine billion. Oh yeah, and
Forbes said that she was the one hundred and fifty
ninth richest woman in the world.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Congratulations, it's me.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Thompson was living in la with her toddler daughter, as
is the fashion for the rich who don't have a
day job, she hired a nanny. Oh of course, kid,
a woman named Pamela Miller. So Thompson's ex still lived
in Canada. He wanted more visitation rights for his daughter.
Cue the lawsuits. Miller's paycheck came from Thompson, so when

(28:24):
it came time to go to court, she felt like
she had to back up her employer. Of course, but
it wasn't the truth. Miller thought Thompson was lying when
she said she spent a lot of time with her daughter,
because Miller said the truth was I was the one
who had the kid all day long and Thompson was
away from home many many nights. That's not all. Here's
here's the amazing, horrible stuff. Miller wasn't allowed to give

(28:46):
the two year old any carbohydrates because her mother, quote
wanted her to be very thin.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
You got a two year old on a diet. She's like,
look at these rolls? Can we get rid of my roll?

Speaker 3 (28:57):
All up in the ass makes the kid?

Speaker 2 (28:59):
I don't like it. I want to see the bone.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
I want the bone. I want I want to see.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Color and ribs. That's what I want to see. February
a racehorse ribs.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
February of two thousand and two. The little girl complained
of an earache, and Miller, the nanny, said that Thompson
the mom poured olive oil and sawtaed onions into the
ear to soothe the pain.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
What I can't is that, even like an old wife,
the kid's not an omelet.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
I don't know. I've never heard that sawtaed onions in
an ear?

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Are you shoving it down in the netty pot? Like
how does that work?

Speaker 3 (29:29):
I don't know? Like, of course it doesn't work. So
the kid is even in more pain. Yeah, Miller had
to stay up all night to soothe her because like,
where's the mom. She dumps the stuff in her ear
and takes.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Off, and now she's got like a mess and an infection. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
So that was the last straw for Miller than nanny.
She rang up the dad in Canada. He was understandably upset.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Because he's like, I can't take care of the kid
and you are in the air.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
Yeah. So Miller is now on his side in the
court case. She signed an affi David affirming that you
know what she'd seen and what she experience and of course,
you know, Thompson gets word of this and fires her. Okay,
So Thompson found out that she had called you know,
the and was planning to help in the case. So
she turns around and she hires Anthony Pelicanoh charge was

(30:16):
to make Miller's life miserable.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Yes, I call that one.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
According to Vanity Fair quote, whenever she would get a
new nanny job, she would be let go. Within weeks
of her being hired by a member of the Michael
Douglas family, she was let go. The same thing happened
when she went to work for producer John Peters. Pelicana
would stalk her going as far as to sit directly
behind her in a movie theater. She was wiretapped, and

(30:41):
members of her family had their private information illegally accessed.
They went so far as to take photos of her
when she was with the children she had been hired
to watch. Needless to say, not many wealthy parents wanted
to keep a nanny who was being photographed with their children. Yes, yeah,
so charming. Charming.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
It wasn't just the foes of his clients that he
went after. He also went after well, yeah, the press exactly.
So there's this journalist with the show Hard Copy, which
I'm tempted to put the word journalist in quotation marks.
We're talking about that show. But I suppose technically she
was a journalist named Diane Diamond. She got a first
hand taste of the Pelicano technique. She broke a lot

(31:20):
of news about the Michael Jackson case, and following that
she was pretty sure her work and home phones were tapped,
so she said a trap. She tells the story of
this in the New York Times documentary about Pelicano called
The Sin Eater, which is very good to trap Pelicano
in his wiretapping ways, she had her husband ring her up.
He didn't identify himself and just started talking to her

(31:42):
about a documentary on Anthony Pelicano. He's going on and
on about how he is this information, and Diamond is
telling him that the project is really cooking along. It's
going to be so great. She hangs up a phone.
A couple of minutes later, a lawyer from the Hard
Copy Legal Department calls her. They asked if she was
working on a documentary about l a Anthony Pelicano. She
acts stunned, what are you talking about? Well, apparently they'd

(32:04):
just gotten a call from attorney Howard Weitzman's office saying
she was working on an Anthony Pelicano documentary. He wanted
more information. There was her proof, because there was no
Pelicano doc. Yes, that call with her husband was the
only time she'd ever mentioned one.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
And the only time she said the words.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
Out loud, exactly. And there it is, you know, boom trap.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
An ego trap, It's like a money trap an ego exactly.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
But it wasn't just Diane Diamond who was the focus
of this. LA Times reporter Anita Bush was also a target. Bush,
a former New York Times reporter, was working on stories
about the movie industry. One was about an allegation that
one of Action stars Steven Sagall's producing partners was in
with the Gambino crime family.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
I mean, come on, that surprised.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
She was also doing another piece about Michael Ovitz, the
founder of CAA talent and one time president of Disney.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Oh yeah, big lawsuit against Michael Eisner.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
Uh huh. So she had been writing about how his
agency was failing something he didn't take kindly to. Let's
take a break. When we come back, we'll find out
what he did to Anita Bush.

Speaker 7 (33:02):
Oh, Zarin, Elizabeth, close your eyes.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
Oh you snuck it up on me. I'll right my eyes.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
I want you to picture it. Yes, it's the morning
of June twentieth, two thousand and two. You're standing on
the front lawn of your house, watering your hydranges before
the heat kicks in. The birds are singing, and you
wave at two kids riding by on their bikes. They
see you and give you the middle finger. You scoff
and go back to watering your plants. You casually look
over at your neighbor's house. She's a nice lady. Newspaper

(33:49):
reporter for the Times As you glance over, you see
that there's something wrong with her audi in the driveway.
The windshield appears to be cracked pretty severely, and there's
something resting just above the wiper blades. Now, you were
outside sweeping your front steps when she came home yesterday morning,
and you didn't hear her car leave after that, so
you know she didn't come home with a windshield looking
like that. Like what, You're just an attentive neighbor or car.

(34:11):
You turn off the hose. You head over to her house,
stopping to scoop up the La Times that had been
delivered early that morning. You had heard it slap on
the pavement of her driveway. You know you're just listening.
You're attentive. You walk up to her front door and
you ring the bell. After a moment, she opens the door.
Good morning, Anita, here's your paper. I noticed there's something
wrong with your windshield and wanted to let you know. Thanks, Gladys,

(34:33):
she says. Then she pads out in her slippers to
look at the car. As she approaches it, she turns
back to you with a quizzical look on her face.
You both see that what's sitting at the bottom of
the windshield. Cradled between that and the hood of the
car is an aluminum baking pan. A piece of paper
is taped to the glass above it. Odd, you say.
You both step closer, and you see that written on

(34:53):
the paper in big red letters is the word stop
all caps. You gasp. Anita reaches into her pocket for
her phone and calls the police. She explains the situation.
They tell her not to touch the tray and to
just wait for them. The two you sit together on
her front stoop. As you wait for the authorities. The
Lapd rolls up, follows closely by the FBI, their radios crackling.

(35:14):
They approach and lift the aluminum prey. Underneath is a
dead fish with a rose in its mouth. Wow, the
color drains from Anita's face. You gasp again and then
faint onto Anita's lawn. The same kiss as before, ride
by and once again give you the finger. So the
investigation of this whole fish incident, which, by the way,

(35:35):
a dead fish with a rose in its mouth.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yes, like what that's the look of Brazzi thing, but
with a touch of class.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
It's a touch of glass. So the FEDS discovered that
an lapd sergeant named Mark Arneson, who was on Pelicano's payroll,
had run a background and address check for Bush.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
The investigation then kind of turns over to the OVID stories.
According to the New Yorker quote, Ovitz told the FBI
that he paid Pelicano seventy five thousand dollars to investigate
two CAA agents and, among others, his former partner Ron Mayer,
David Geffen, and the reporters Anita Bush and Bernard Wintraub,
then with The New York Times, who were allegedly harming

(36:15):
his ability to sell Artists Management Group. Wow, huh so
they knew, Okay, well, maybe this has to do with him.
Ovitz said he asked Pelicano for quote all kinds of information,
but he said that Bush was a friend of his
and he was never behind any threat to her. He
also denied knowing anything about any illegal actions Pelicano may
have done, saying, quote, I'm assuming whatever he did, he

(36:38):
did it legally. I never instructed him to do anything illegal.
I'm thinking it's back to the Steven Sagal Gambino crime family.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
But that's just oh interesting call.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
Yeah. So, when asked about Pelicano's ties to Illinois mobsters,
Ovid said that he never saw them. Quote to me,
this is going to sound really stupid, but the couple
of times I met him, he seemed really out of shape.
He was just a regular looking middle aged man. He
didn't look like those imposing guys on the Sopranos are
in The Godfather. I'm like, did you watch the Sopranos

(37:08):
that It's not just a bunch of like card bodies exactly.
I think if you want regular looking middle aged men,
there's your show.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Just get some tracksuits, valure and you got it.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
Boom okay. So Bush later sued Ovids and Pelicano, and
they settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. On
November twenty first, two thousand and two, the FBI rated
Pelicano's Sunset Boulevard office. Are you saying? They found there
a safe full of quote, explosives, two hand grenades, loaded pistols,

(37:42):
and bundles of cash, totaling about two hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
So his go bag his going exactly.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
He said that the explosives belonged to a celebrity client,
likely Don Simpson, and that he confiscated them and was
going to dispose of them by throwing them off of
a friend's boat, as you do.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Yeah, that's how I get rid of it.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
That's the best way.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
If I don't, if I can't reach your pier, I'm like, hey,
was this go out this weekend?

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Toss it.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
I'm gonna bring some explosives. I need a dump.

Speaker 3 (38:06):
So two months later the FBI raided his offices again.
They discovered that most of what had been in the
office was now shredded or gone, including the entire Michael
Jackson case. Everything's gone. However, they found something in the
back room. Pellicano called that the bat cave or the
war room, and in it were computers and like those

(38:27):
cd ROMs. Sure full of hundreds of hours of encrypted,
illegally wired tapped conversations and things.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
I'm sure he didn't understand how to destroy, so he's probably.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
And then there were also but he could destroy one
hundred and fifty thousand pages of transcribed recordings. Oh wow,
this transcriptions. So the FBI cracked the password on the
protected files. Yes, it was office Dash three two two
dash omerta. The files weren't the recordings of tape of
the tapped calls for clients that they were hoping they'd

(38:57):
be okay, like the you know, unwing tap. No, they
were conversations that Pelicano had taped of himself, conversations with
his clients.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Oh, his own clients. Okay.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
These served as his notes. He told the feds.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Ah, they're not like his blackmail leverage.

Speaker 4 (39:12):
No.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
But according to the New York Times, quote in the calls,
mister Pelicano was often heard posturing as if he were
a Coosonostram mobster, boasting of his Omerita like code of honor,
his connection to gangsters, and his distaste for quote rats.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
For somebody who has a love of America, he really
doesn't understand the silent part.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
Of it, exactly exactly, he.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Understands the code part. He's got that.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
When you watch that documentary The Sin Eater, they play
the tapes and it's just like the way he's just
posturing is phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
Anyone who really is involved with in the Omerica, you
probably won't ever hear anything about it. It's gonna be
like someone talking about the Warriors. They just don't talk
about that.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
That's the whole point. Well, so these tapes and the
interviews with employees that the FEDS did exposed how Pelicano
dug up all the information in the dirt he needed.
So Vanity Fair lays this out. First, you get his
or in lots of juicy cases, her address, No problem there.
A police sergeant on Pelicano's payroll would tap into the
LAPD computer databases. Now that you have the address, getting

(40:13):
the phone number is equally easy. A Pacific Bell employee,
also on the take would track it down along with
the coded numbers of the cables servicing the phone. The
rest could have been done either in the central station
or if necessary, at a terminal box. Next to the
red and green wires that service the line would be
a tangle of yellow and black wires what wiremen called
the spare pair. Normally, the spare pair is used to

(40:33):
hook up an extension or another line. Only now the
yellow and black wires would be wireman familiar with the
technique theorized spliced into the mainline and with the help
of some technomagic. The subject's phone was a party line,
and Pelicano was the one having the party. A phone
would ring, say in a mansion in bel Air or Brentwood,
and automatically, silently simultaneously, computers in his office on Sunset

(40:56):
Boulevard would start taping the conversation. Every move you'd make,
plan you'd make, every valued break, Pelicana would be listening
to you. Right. So, February of two thousand and four,
he pleads guilty to possession of illegal explosives and was
sentenced to thirty months in prison. That's after that first raid,

(41:16):
right before he's like getting ready to get shipped off
to the clink, he and six others are indicted and
taken into custody on charges of quote, conspiring to wiretap,
blackmail and intimidate dozens of celebrities and other targets. So
he first gets the thirty months. Now he's going back
to court. He pleads not guilty on this. He was
held without bail after the prosecution quote alleged he was

(41:38):
issuing threats from prison against potential witnesses.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
I'm guessing at this point all of his big lawyer
friends have turned on him and he doesn't have the
ability to get a tumble.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
Them are like in the cross.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
They want to have as much distance as they can.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
Well, here's the thing, Okay, So the trial begins in
March of two thousand and eight, he represented himself. Oh
my god, that's no way to win.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
He's not even a lawyer, no way to win.

Speaker 3 (41:59):
But he said he we knew he was going to lose,
and I know that. He said he wasn't going to
rat on anyone. Okay, he knew his employees.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
Would sing to the Feds like Pavarati.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
But he said he knew the most about the case.
And he said he didn't know a lawyer smart enough
to take the case, So why pay if the inevitable
him going to jail is going to happen.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Wait to get the insult in there to all the
lawyers he knows on the way to I'm going to jail.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
He announced mid trial that he would not take the stand. Quote,
I am not mister Pelicano is not going to discuss
conversations with clients. It's not going to happen ever, no
matter the consequence.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
He's sitting in one chair, your honor, just one secondly,
going to consult My client, jumps chairs and whispers to
himself and he listens. Okay, I guess it, fights with himself,
jumps back chairs, your honor. My client is being unreasonable.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
Exactly, he said later, quote, I could have saved myself
or at least done less time if I had even
slightly cooperated with the government. I could have ruined many
careers in lives, and I could have hurt many law
enforcement personnel employees, even judges. But I would have dishonored
myself by doing so. I remember them telling the court
that they disagreed with my form of honor, but respected it.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
So he only likes to brag for little chits of like, hey,
you know, cool I am. But when it comes down
to like being able to free himself from anything, that's
when the America.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Kemes yeah, but no the owners, Yeah, he firm, he
held firm. So May of two thousand and eight, he's
convicted on seventy six counts of wire tapping, racketeering, and
other charges. It took the judge an hour to read
the full verdict. Oh wow, he gets sentenced to fifteen
years in prison.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
That's all.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
He Also he had to forfeit more than two million
dollars that he made from his wire tapping work. Michael Ovitz,
Brad Gray, Bert Fields, all of the other Hollywood elite
in his orbit. They all escaped charges or implications. Of course,
many thought the trial would implicate, you know, all of
these elite but it never did.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
They can I'll say, I'd never unless they have a
tape of him saying I'll do this for you, and
then they're lawyer. A lot of them are lawyers. They're
not going to let somebody.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
Say that out exactly exactly. So there were some who
did get in trouble for their work with Pelicano.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Non lawyers.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah, a former phone company worker was found guilty of racketeering, conspiracy,
and wire tapping, but was acquitted of four of nine
of the wire tapping accounts. Remember Kevin Kachikian, Yes, hell Yeah,
developed tell Us luth. He was convicted of possessing a
wire tapping device and conspiracy to wire tap, but he
got acquitted of nine counts of wire tapping. Abner Nachierri

(44:33):
he was charged with listening to and translating a business
adversaries in intercepted calls. He was convicted of aiding and
abtting wire tapping. Mark Arnison, that LAPD sergeant who would
run the place the Feds found almost one hundred times
when Pelicano and Arnison accessed confidential law enforcement records, including
FBI's National Crime Information Center database. So they did this

(44:57):
to get intel about targets including Gary Shanling, Kevin Neeland,
dozens of others. Director John McTiernan Diehard huntfhredic to October
he was caught lying to FBI agents about having had
Pelicano wiretap Producer Charles Roven who did Three Kings Batman Begins.
He was later charged with two counts of making false

(45:18):
statements to federal agents.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
One count of perjury for a statement to a federal
judge while seeking to withdraw his plea, and he got
a year in prison.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
I'm telling you.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
A couple days after the initial indictment, Pelicano and Terry Christiansen,
a Hollywood lawyer, they were each indicted on two new
counts of conspiracy and wiretapping. Christiansen pleaded not guilty. So
that's one lawyer who went down. December two thousand and eight,
The La Times reported that Mark Rossini, quote, a veteran
FBI agent, has been accused of illegally accessing computers at

(45:49):
bureau headquarters in Washington, d C. And what prosecutors suspect
was a failed bid to help Hollywood private eye Anthony
Pelicano defend himself against federal racketeering and wire tapping charges.
So he's accused of this and then turns around and yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
And does it. And then this guy's like, I'll take
that money.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
When he did those searches, the Rossini he was dating
actress Linda Fiorentino. Get out, I will not Fiorentino friend
of Pelicano.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Of course I hear.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
Yeah. So apparently she told Rossini quote, she was researching
a script about an LA wiretapper extraordinaire Anthony Pelicano and
needed to see the documents exactly.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
I was doing research exactly.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
So Rossini he pleads guilty to five misdemeanor counts of
unauthorized FBI computer access, and he admitted to quote conducting
more than forty unauthorized searches of the Bureau's automated case
support system, which contains confidential and sensitive information related to
ongoing and historic cases investigated by the FBI. Many of
the searches related to the criminal case against Pelicano, who

(46:53):
was tried and convicted earlier in Los Angeles. Yeah, so Rossini,
he gets sentenced to a year probation. Yeah, given a
five thousand dollars fine.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
I thought he's gonna get like one to three.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
They're like, he's love sick, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
He also loves He had to resign, wouldn't you.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
He had to resign from the FBI. In prison, Pelicano wrote,
Haikus did crosswords, so like at this point, wrote Haikus
and did crosswords. He's me. In college, he played chess,
he read two thousand books. Okay, it's still me. And
then he did high level geometry problems, so that's you.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Okay, he's got one of me. Mostly tell me, he.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
Said, quote, I don't make any friends. I'm absolutely unsociable.
You have to understand there are guys here who are
looking for ways to get information, to get their sentences
reduced and all that. There's always a guy who will
ask me a question that will lead to another question.
So I just don't answer people. I keep to myself.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Wow, and he made it through.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
Yeah. He was released on his seventy fifth birthday, March
twenty second, twenty nineteen.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
I guess he was in such an old head that
they just let.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Him set to the side.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
In twenty eighteen, he's hanging out on the chapel doing geometry.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
Exactly twenty eighteen, he told the Hollywood Reporter, quote, the
government claimed that I compromised the judicial system, and I did.
I was off in the court of last resort for
many people. People and not just famous ones. Didn't pay
me all that money just to hear stories about how
I had failed to get things done.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
I always kept my word and I did everything I could, good,
bad or indifferent to get the job done. And I
was successful.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
Now can you imagine the good at his job Anthony
pelicannor who's out there right now doing all the same
stuff for all this people. So we aren't going to
hear about it because exactly they aren't telling around going hey,
I'm a merit dem every.

Speaker 3 (48:32):
Joker we have on this podcast, there's got to be
another who we don't find out about. Yes, so he
gets out. He has lost his PI license for good,
No worries. He's still quote negotiated for friends. Twenty twenty one,
Ron City experts Ron Mayer, the vice chairman of NBC Universal,
asked him to represent producer Joel Silver in a negotiation

(48:55):
with Canadian billionaire and businessman Darryl Kate's. Okay, Pelican, he
got power of attorney to act on Silver's behalf for
these negotiations.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
Got power of attorney for Joel.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Silver, limited power to sole.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Yeah, Joel Silver trusted him a power of attorney the
man who defended himself in court and.

Speaker 3 (49:11):
Pelicana wouldn't say how he settled the argument. But quote,
folks in the media call me a fixer. So that's
a term you could use. I'm legally allowed to do that.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
I'm a legal fixer, right so, and my buddy Lougal
slugger At he said.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Quote people like to call me a fixer. The term
I use is negotiator. I negotiate on behalf of clients.
Am I doing anything illegal?

Speaker 2 (49:32):
No? I am not. Ah see, I like to call
myself a facilitator.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
He settled the Silver Kates thing, but then August of
twenty two, Kate's hired him, apparently impressed with his fixing
skills just by being amazed. So Kate's had been accused
of paying seventy five thousand dollars for sex with a
seventeen year old ballet dancer, Oh Jesus. Kate said that
they didn't have sex, and that he paid her fifty
thousand dollars for a proposed film project and then anyway,

(49:59):
she was eight when he met her.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Sir, Yeah, sir.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
The allegations are dismissed in court, but Pelicano was able
to get them dismissed quote with prejudice so they wouldn't
come up later.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Alec Baldwin, Alec AaB I have personal tized to him.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Researcher Marissa described him as quote the ultimate sycophant, which
is so spot on. That's a really good call, Yeah, Baldwin.
He interviewed Pelicano for his podcast. Here's the thing. Okay,
here's Baldwin kissing up to Pelicano. Quote. I do believe
from the research I've done, you're obviously a very smart guy.
You're a very tough guy. You're a guy with a

(50:36):
lot of principles. You went through hell because of your principles.
But when you really tortured yourself in service of your principles.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
You would one percent two hundred percent have hired him
and then said I want to hear the legal stuff.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
Yeah exactly, And then right now he's just saying, don't
ever come at me with Pelicano told Alec Baldwin quote
to me, the most important thing in my life was
honor and my word. It still is today because they
took everything away and that's what I've got left, and
that's all I really cherish. When I had a client,
they became a member of my family, and nobody with

(51:09):
my family.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Certain none of your family talks to you.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
Well, apparently money buys entry into the family.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah, that's how it works.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
So what's your ridiculous takeaways? Aaron? Thanks for asking.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
These these rental families. I just do not trust them.
I know, either you're talking about the real mafia or
just the Pelicano mafia. If I'm buying my way into
a family, I don't know. I mean, money spends so quick.
Exactly what's your ridiculous takeaway?

Speaker 3 (51:35):
Losing exactly what yours was?

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Oh nice, look at that symmetry.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
That's all I have for today. You can find us
online at ridiculous crime dot com. We're also at ridiculous
Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. Email us at ridiculous
Crime at gmail dot com, leave a talk back on
the iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Elizabeth Dutton's and Burnett that's produced and edited by President

(52:02):
of Teleslooth Industries, Dave Coustain. Tim research is by Crooked
LAPD officer Marisa Brown and proud owner of a fishmonger
slash florist shop Andrea Song Sharpened Tear. The theme song
is by legendary talent agent Thomas Lee an unhinged film
producer Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five Hundred.
Executive producers are Ben I Can Help You Out, Honey

(52:24):
Ballin and Noel Your Family, Baby.

Speaker 4 (52:27):
Rounds Crime, Say It One More Time, Gus Crime.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more Podcasts.
My Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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