PERSON: Tony Pellicano was the go-to guy
to take care of life's annoying problems.
PERSON: Anthony Pellicano was Mr. Fix-It to the stars.
PERSON: He represented
just about everybody,
some of the biggest lawyer names.
PERSON: He had access to information,
and he would acquire it ruthlessly.
ANCHOR: When my phone started
clicking and popping--
pop-pop-pop--cchhh...
- I thought immediately, Anthony Pellicano,
the wiretap surveillance expert.
PERSON: Anthony was hired to shut people down.
- And he used intimidation to do it.
[suspenseful music]
PERSON: The man had been hired by Pellicano
to threaten a reporter named Anita Busch.
- Okay. So I get stop, or you'll be
swimming with the fishes, stop, or you'll die.
I got that.
- We obviously did what we do. We began investigating.
PERSON: Anthony Pellicano is gonna go down.
The question is, who else is gonna go down with him?
- Everybody was expecting that he was
gonna expose that they had used him
to wiretap their adversaries.
PERSON: I would say paralyzed with fear
is pretty much the mood.
[dramatic music]
- I never went after innocent people.
Never.
[dramatic musical sting]
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- So you want me to straddle this?
Is that what you want me to do?
Is this okay like this?
I don't--I can't see me, so I don't know.
CREWPERSON: Would you prefer him be able
to scooch up a little?
- You want me to scoot up a little?
Yeah. Go ahead, go ahead. Be a fucking pain in the ass.
CREWPERSON: Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, go ahead.
And, uh... - There you go.
CREWPERSON: Yeah, you know,
the more you're kinda sitting forward,
generally, the better. - Yeah, yeah, fuck that shit.
Come on.
CREWPERSON: And if you hadn't figured it out already,
Liz is on a teleprompter.
- I like looking at pretty girls, so...
- Um...okay.
What was your first time wiretapping?
- [sighs] I-I was wi-wiretapping in the '60s.
LIZ: What made you decide to do that?
'Cause it's risky, right? It's-it's illegal.
- Well, honey, that was... [laughs]
that's a minor part of risk.
things that you did LIZ: Were there
that the government that were illegal
never was able to charge you with?
- Oh, my goodness.
[laughing]
Let's see--we're on a tape-recorded interview,
and you're asking me did I do anything illegal?
Of course I did.
[upbeat news theme]
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to "Larry King Live."
- Anthony, I mean, you guys in your business,
you tap phones, don't you?
- Anyone who breaks the law has gotta be nuts,
you know what I mean,
especially when you're involved in a high-profile case.
You're going to go down with the defendant.
I-I broke the law all the time, you know?
And-and so did other private investigators.
You know, we all break the law...to a degree.
I mean, you know, you don't wanna commit a felony.
You don't wanna go to prison for doing it.
But, I mean, and I would use the term bending the law.
You bend the law a lot.
I mean, you can't help but bend the law
in order to accomplish what you need to do.
- Never, no.
I never bullied anybody.
REPORTER: He has a reputation
said to be built on bully tactics,
dirt, and a baseball bat.
REPORTER: FBI agents began an investigation of Pellicano
after an anonymous threat
was made against a newspaper reporter.
ANCHOR: Reporter Anita Busch was investigating
Seagal's alleged involvement with organized crime.
TOM BALLARD: I nitially, the threat against Anita Busch
had overtones of organized crime.
went to the Organized Crime And so that's how the case Squad.
TOM: Based on a recording where Proctor
points the finger back to Pellicano.
We have enough probable cause
to conduct a search of Pellicano's offices
for evidence that could back up the allegations.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
DANIEL SAUNDERS: When agents searched Pellicano's office,
they found what they testified to be
more computers than they had ever seen
at any one location in their lives.
[jazzy musical sting]
He had a room that we later learned
was dubbed the War Room which was filled with computers,
a long row of computers lined up, running.
♪ ♪
During the course of the search, they asked him,
"Is there anything on the premises
that could endanger us or hurt us?"
Pellicano said no.
The agents came across a safe.
They had Pellicano open the safe.
And inside that safe they found...
two functional hand grenades,
a large quantity of plastic explosives.
I believe an expert testified
that it was enough plastic explosive
to take down an airplane.
- I had them in my evidence safe
and completely forgot about 'em.
- Well, [sighs] if you were living my life at the time,
it was very chaotic.
And the FBI will tell you
that I was just as shocked as they were
when they pulled it out of my evidence safe.
And I opened up the safe.
And there's the C-4 and the grenades, so...
Anyway.
- I took away from a client, yes.
TOM: No, it was the height of stupidity,
but when it comes to criminal cases,
you kind of rely on the bad guys.
They're not, uh, super villains.
- We had a whole new crime that we were then investigating,
and that subsequently led to Pellicano's arrest
for possessing illegal explosives.
REPORTER: The hottest Hollywood drama this summer
has the entertainment capital's movers and shakers
on the edge of their seats.
REPORTER: Anthony Pellicano. REPORTER: The FBI conducted
a search of Pellicano's office...
REPORTER: Where they found grenades
and plastic explosives.
And that put Anthony Pellicano in jail.
DANIEL: At Pellicano's bail hearing
on the explosives charges in November 2002,
someone who was in the audience watching the hearing
approached FBI agent Stan Ornellas
and said that she had information
and knowledge of Pellicano's involvement
in illegal wiretapping.
That was the first indication that we had
of Pellicano's involvement in wiretapping.
[edgy music]
That led to another search warrant in mid-January 2003,
which was to go back to Pellicano's offices
and search this time
for evidence of involvement in illegal wiretapping.
When they executed that wiretapping search warrant,
they looked in that war room
where all those Macs had been up and running
when they were in there in November.
It was completely empty.
When I got out on bail,
I came back and I shredded everything,
lots of things about lots of celebrities
so they would never get into the hands of anybody--
videotapes and all kinds of things
that I had in a room I called the War Room.
[punchy music]
The entire Michael Jackson case--
shredded all that.
It's all gone.
[punchy music]
- I think we might have had a very different case
if all of those computers had been seized
during the first search warrant.
But other than that,
they seized many more computers and devices
from Pellicano's office.
We didn't know what we were looking at for quite some time
because Pellicano encrypted what was on the computers.
It took the FBI quite some time
to decrypt those hard drives.
So really, a lot of what we were learning
in the early days wasn't from what was seized.
It was from witness interviews.
TOM: We started running down leads...
Interviewing people and celebrities
associated with the case,
like Garry Shandling, like Sylvester Stallone.
TOM: You know, a lot of people that we talked to
got a glimpse of what was going on.
So we have the outlines of what's happening here,
but we haven't had anybody employed by him
admit this is what's actually happening.
[edgy music]
So we decided we're gonna take a run
at one of Pellicano's employees
by the name of Tarita Virtue.
We really didn't think that it was going to be fruitful,
but she invites us in.
And then quickly...
it's apparent she's gonna tell us everything she knows.
CLERK: This is tape number one
for the videotaped deposition of Tarita Virtue.
AGENT: Um, Miss Virtue, we're here today for the purpose
of taking your deposition in a civil action that's pending.
When did you first become employed by Anthony Pellicano?
- Approximately June of 2000.
TOM: When we sit down with Tarita,
we sit back and just listen because it is a narrative.
AGENT: When you first became employed,
what were your job duties?
- Inputting data into, um, DOS programs
and then going online and doing basic background checks.
AGENT: At some point in time, did your job duties change?
- They did.
AGENT: What was the nature of the different work
that you began doing
a few weeks after you first began your employment?
- Listening to wiretaps.
[light notes]
- This is somebody that wants to tell us
exactly what she saw,
and more importantly, what she did.
- He would plug, uh, the external hard drive
into my computer and enter in a password.
The passwords were a bit lengthy,
meaning more than just one word.
And he would always end them in "Omerta."
He would have me listen to each call.
And when I would do that,
something called Telesleuth Player would come up.
It was software devised by Mr. Pellicano
and Kevin Kachikian.
- Pellicano and a computer tech who worked for him
named Kevin Kachikian had designed a computer program
that they called Telesleuth.
- It basically would take all the phone data
that was coming in,
record all of these calls,
categorize them.
- He, um, instructed me how to document
call I needed to make notes which specific area of the about.
I could mark certain parts of the call
by looking at the sound wave and also hearing tones.
So if somebody called their bank
and they had to enter in an account number,
I would be able to mark
the beginning of that digit being pressed
to the last digit being pressed.
And I would have all of those numbers translated
so I could get credit card numbers, account numbers,
passwords, all of it.
- Now we had an insider, Tarita telling us, yes.
This is what allows us to tap the phone.
AGENT: What was Rayford Turner's roll?
- He was working for Pac Bell,
and he, uh...
he-he was Mr. Pellicano's contact for wiretapping.
DANIEL: Pellicano had a number of well-placed sources
within the telephone company, people who had access to
confidential telephone company databases
that can then be used to implement an illegal wiretap.
[bleep]
ANITA BUSCH: My phones weren't working.
I was trying to call in from where I was remotely
to get my messages so I could continue on as a journalist.
[static, crackling]
And I remember thinking, you know,
what the hell's going on here?
I wasn't a victim. In my head, I was not a victim.
I was a journalist first.
That's how I lived.
And then one time...
I'm walking out of the house.
It's, like, quarter till 9:00 in the morning.
And all of a sudden, I hear this car.
And it's barreling towards me.
I was so scared.
They screeched past me, and they took off.
And then they backed up.
And the guy hung out of the side of the car.
I saw him go.
And I was like, oh my God.
I'm gonna get shot in the head.
Here it comes. I'm gonna fucking die
in front of this stupid fricking apartment building.
[sniffles]
And then they took off.
And I was like, what am I dealing with,
and how far are they gonna go?
AGENT: Would you please state your full name?
- Wayne Donald Reynolds.
AGENT: You're familiar with Anthony Pellicano, are you not?
- Unfortunately.
AGENT: When did you work for
the Pellicano Investigative Agency full-time?
- Sometime from '96 to '99, I believe.
[edgy music]
AGENT: "Pellicano was verbally abusive
"to his employees,
and particularly to the women."
Is that an accurate statement? - That's an understatement.
He was physically abusive at points, too.
He'd throw things.
ANTHONY: I probably was the worst boss in the world.
You know, very, very tough on everybody, all the time,
and I had to be because I had to get people
to move in a direction quickly.
- "Pellicano also encouraged his female employees
to get cosmetic surgery." Is that accurate?
- And how was that - Oh, yeah. articulated?
- Your boobs are too small.
Here's some money. Go get 'em done.
AGENT: Did the office have a little bit
of a "Peyton Place" atmosphere to it?
- "Peyton Place"?
ANNOUNCER: This is the continuing story
of "Peyton Place."
AGENT: All right. I-I'm dating myself.
Did it have a soap opera type atmosphere to it?
- Drama ran rampant, yes.
[moody music]
- I'm Stacy Joiner,
and I used to work for Anthony Pellicano.
I had alwa ys wanted to be in criminal justice.
And I started getting interested
in private investigating.
And he was known to be, like, the PI in town.
He's very strategic.
I think there's a certain vulnerability
that a man like him was looking for.
ANTHONY: I was like a father figure
to a lot of the women there, you know?
I-I was a savior to them, a lot of them.
They would come to me with personal problems,
and I would handle it.
I would get on the phone and tell abusive boyfriends
to straighten out.
You know, I would do all of that.
It was a family.
And I was the patriarch. I was the boss.
I was all things.
And they were my fingers.
They would get things done for me.
- The employees in the office were usually all women.
And they had problems with Mr. Pellicano, um,
the way he spoke, how he'd try and touch them
and things like that.
STACY: On Monday morning, he required you
to give him a hug, give him a kiss,
go through with your weekend.
And then the same thing on a Friday--
give him a kiss goodbye for the weekend.
And it was always...
attempted to try to be on the lips.
- I mean, everybody used to kiss me, and I kissed them.
I mean, the women who worked for me were all--
we were all very close.
- Mr. Pellicano was a micromanager,
and if he said something, we just did it.
We didn't ask questions why.
STACY: Every call that came in,
I would walk into Anthony's office,
and I had to stand on the left side of him
and wait until he acknowledged that I was standing there.
And once he did, then I would tell him who the call was,
and then he would say whether or not he would take the call.
- If I ever said that without him acknowledging me first,
he would get crazy mad.
- I just remember taking breaks.
And I would go and sit outside and just bawl my eyes out.
And I'd go back upstairs and keep working.
I never asked Anthony if he was wiretapping people.
I did ask him what he was listening to.
And he would always say, "The less you know, the better."
time with his ex-wife on the I hear him arguing all the phone.
One morning I was bringing him his coffee.
He's at his desk with the headphones and everything.
And I don't know what it was, but it clicked.
Like, oh my God, he's actually listening
to all of her conversations.
- But I had no idea at all
to the extent of...
what he was doing in the industry.
One day he had a yelling tangent in the War Room.
He just went off.
And I said, "I quit," and I walked out of the room.
And I went into my office,
and I went to take the key off of my key ring.
And he comes in after me
and he kind of pushed me against the hall, um, wall
and said, "You're not quitting.
You're not quitting. Nobody quits here."
He didn't hit me or anything,
but it was the force of him putting me against the wall,
like him putting his body up against mine.
And I threw the key on the floor, and I ran out.
I was scared. I was--
I just wanted to be away from him.
I just felt like he was this mean, aggressive man.
I just wanted to be away from him.
In addition to working for people in
the entertainment industry-- celebrities, lawyers--
Pellicano did a lot of work with law enforcement.
- When Anthony was awaiting sentencing
on the weapons charges,
he submitted a whole host of thank-you letters
that law enforcement agencies had sent him over the years.
PERSON: He had connections to all of those places,
and he had connections at the LAPD
where he was able to, quid pro quo,
get Mark Arneson to run plates for him.
AGENT: Who is Mark Arneson?
- Uh, our contact at the police department.
He would give us background checks and DMV records.
[punchy string music]
DANIEL: The first step that Pellicano took
in almost every investigation that he did
was to get a list of names
to one of the police officers on his payroll.
And those were Mark Arneson at the LA Police Department
and Craig Stevens
at the Beverly Hills Police Department.
Both of them, as a routine matter,
would access protected databases
that only police officers have access to,
databases that show things
like somebody's criminal history,
DMV information, particular addresses.
[phone beeps]
[Anthony laughs]
DANIEL: The names that Pellicano
would give to Mark Arneson to run...
included not just the victims or the witnesses
in a particular criminal case.
It included their children,
their spouses, people who had only the most
remote, tangential relationship to anything in the case
but who Pellicano apparently believed
he could use information on
if he were to uncover something to leverage.
DANIEL: There were cases
where Mark Arneson, who was being paid
by the citizens of Los Angeles to protect them,
was actually feeding information to Pellicano,
who was representing the defendants
in those criminal cases.
We identified, I think, 2,500 unauthorized computer runs
that Arneson did during that time.
It's hard to explain just how corrupt that is.
- Oh.
LINDA DOUCETT: Kevin Nealon, Linda Nealon,
Linda--me, Doucett, Gavin de Becker.
- Uh...friends of Garry's.
They were friends of ours.
Garry's security advisor and Uh, Gavin de Becker was friend.
I guess this is Pellicano's work I'm looking at.
Correct?
- Yeah. Wow.
In 2003, I'm living outside of Los Angeles
on a small ranch with my son.
I was contacted by the FBI.
They interviewed me about Brad Grey,
telling me that there was an investigation going on
and wanted to know how much I was aware of.
[uneasy music]
Later on in the afternoon, I got a phone call from
a very scary-sounding man, very threatening,
saying if you keep talking to your friend Stan--
and that would have been the FBI person, Stan Ornellas--
or the press, your son won't be attending Saint Jean's,
and you won't be seeing him again.
I remember feeling helpless.
I just wanted to run away, and I didn't know where to go.
- The only thing I did with Linda Doucett was got--
got her home address for Bert Fields.
That's it.
Would I ever, ever, tell a mother
that I'm gonna harm their child?
Not a fucking chance would that ever happen.
[moody music]
♪ ♪
- There was another incident that happened,
and I was attacked, physically.
And it was after that that I, um...
I couldn't, um, function.
I told them at the office I had a concussion
and that I got hit in the head.
It was really bad.
♪ ♪
I asked someone to stay with me because I was so scared.
I wanted to die.
I didn't know what I had done wrong.
I don't know what I had done wrong.
It didn't make any sense to me.
- No.
I never did.
- I was scared...
really, really scared.
He said if I reported it, they would know.
And if I didn't stop helping the cops,
we are going to come back and, um,
kill you or harm your family.
The only thing that I have been talking to the police about
was the threat on my life.
So the only face of this was Anthony Pellicano's.
I didn't know what else to think about that.
- No, none.
And I don't think it happened.
I don't--in my-in my... view of things,
along with everything that I learned from the trial
and from FBI agents and everything else in the world,
I don't know anybody in the world
that would wanna do that to her.
Did she bring this to the attention
of her family and friends?
- I didn't want the attention off the, uh, case.
I didn't want my dad to know or my mom to know.
It would kill them.
They were already worried enough.
[sniffles]
REPORTER: All right, Katie. Thanks.
Some people in Hollywood might be a little bit
nervous this morning.
A private investigator to the stars
is expected to begin serving a prison sentence today.
His saga could have more twists and turns
than any Hollywood cliffhanger.
PERS ON: Pellicano pled guilty in connection
to the explosives that were found in his safe,
and he was ultimately sentenced
to 30 months in prison.
While he was in prison,
there was this simultaneous investigation going on
into the wiretapping or other illegal behavior.
DANIEL: Alex Proctor had fingered Steven Seagal
as the Pellicano client behind the threat
against Anita Busch.
But when we started looking into Pellicano's
investigation of Ms. Busch,
that didn't seem to make sense.
Among other things, Mark Arnesen,
at the beginning of the investigation,
did all of his computer runs on Anita Busch,
just like he did for every other Pellicano target.
But at the same time as he ran information on Anita Busch,
he was also running the name of Bernard Weinraub...
Who was another reporter who worked with Ms. Busch
on a series of articles about Michael Ovitz.
Michael Ovitz--uh, what did he, head Disney?
NED ZEMAN: Michael Ovitz was far and away
the most powerful man in Hollywood
during this era and basically for more than a decade.
He ran Creative Artist Agency,
which was the talent agency that represented
most of the powerful stars and directors
and writers in Hollywood.
REPORTER: Michael Ovitz is known as
Hollywood's consummate dealer and agent
to top stars like Tom Hanks and Sylvester Stallone.
NED: He had left CAA in a sort of bitter split.
Then he'd fallen out at Disney with Michael Eisner
in a very public, ugly way.
REPORTER: Former talent agent Ovitz ruffled feathers
among department heads
and clashed with Eisner's desire to control the agenda.
ALLISON: And then he went and
opened up a talent agency.
And his talent agency
was somewhat in competition
with the Creative Artist Agency.
And there was bad blood between them.
NED: Mike Ovitz was getting bad press.
The town was kind of rooting against him.
And I think it was very clear
that they sensed that he was vulnerable.
And I think it was also clear
that he sensed that he was vulnerable.
ALLISON: Anita Busch and Bernie Weinraub
were working on a series of articles
about Ovitz's business and how it was doing.
And, uh, they weren't pulling any punches.
DANIEL: Arneson, Pellicano's source,
had run Bernard Weinraub's name
at the same time as he had run Anita Busch's,
and that led the FBI to believe the real client
behind the threat against Anita Busch
was Michael Ovitz and not Steven Seagal.
TO M: Well, when we sit down and talk to Michael Ovitz,
we're not just talking to Michael Ovitz.
He's got a cadre of well-heeled attorneys.
Ovitz freely admits that he is concerned
about negative press.
DANIEL: He admitted that he had hired Pellicano
to investigate both Anita Busch and Bernard Weinraub.
TOM: But Ovitz denies being behind any threat.
In fact, he identifies Anita as a "friend" of his.
To his mind, how could this be possible?
She's my friend.
We were unable to come up with anything substantial
to refute that denial.
DANIEL: In this case, there just wasn't that evidence,
and there certainly was no evidence
beyond a reasonable doubt that Michael Ovitz
was aware of the specific threat
that was perpetrated against Anita Busch.
As we do with most defendants in large scale cases,
there are offers made.
Do you want to be a witness, or do you want to be a defendant?
There's no way Pellicano would have gotten immunity
or anything like that, but certainly,
if he had agreed to provide information
about his clients, you know,
he could have gotten himself some benefit for that.
[punchy music]
TOM: So we actually sit down with Pellicano.
He's been convicted of the explosives charge.
He's in his prison uniform.
I believe it was a gray jumpsuit.
Our hope was that he would finally decide
that he was going to lay out the entire case.
We know you were doing this
on behalf of clients and attorneys.
A normal person at his age
would be trying to get out of jail.
[light chords]
♪ ♪
Will he consider cooperating at this point?
An d, uh, he looked at us and says, "I'm a sin eater.
"I take the sins of others onto myself,
"and that's what they pay me for,
and I'm not going to cooperate."
- I-I hope this doesn't sound egotistical at all,
but I have to tell you
that most people would have done just the opposite.
They would have done anything they could
to get themselves out of jeopardy.
And I refused to do that.
♪ ♪
ANCHOR: Tinseltown is buzzing
with revelations of spying and wiretaps.
- When we realized that this was going to be
a bigger case than one AUSA could handle...
Kevin was put on the case, and we stayed together on it
for the next eight or nine years.
- To get on a large-scale organized crime case--
like, that's something I had been dreaming of for years.
The FBI were able to
circumvent the encryption program.
So as a result of that, we were able to get a sizable number
of recordings.
LIZ: I think people expected it
to be the actual wiretap calls...
But instead, supposedly,
Pellicano kept those recordings offsite,
so they were never seized by the government.
- Come on. Spit it out. - Well, I--
happened to the recordings? - You're saying what
- Well, I secreted them.
They're in, you know, secreted away.
- It means they weren't in my office.
- [laughs] They're gone.
You'll never see them. Nobody'll ever see them.
- What they ended up with was recordings
of Pellicano talking to other people
on Pellicano's own phone calls.
- Because I couldn't remember everything.
You know, I was very bad note taker.
If I--the reason for doing it
is to record what was being said so I would have--
I would have, you know, an idea of what I needed
to do in a particular case.
I would record it and then go back in and listen to it.
DANIEL: Those recorded conversations
ranged from the completely mundane call
to 411 for the phone number for Circuit City.
ANTHONY: Num ber for Circuit City in Westwood, please.
- Who knows why he chose to record those.
- So metimes I fucking forgot and left the recorder running,
so recorded a bunch of calls, okay?
- But they also included much more incriminating calls,
calls that he was having with clients.
JOHN: Basically, I sort of would like to know what, um,
he's saying to the studio.
DANIEL: Those recordings that Pellicano himself made
of his own criminal activities
ended up being the most important evidence
that we had in the case.
[phone dialing]
[line ringing]
- In 2000, I got a call from a producer,
a guy named Bo Zenga, and he had a case
that he wanted to bring against Brad Grey.
And the basic dispute was about a motion picture
that they'd partnered to produce.
It was known as "Scary Movie."
When they were putting the deals together,
Brad Grey decided to cut my client out of the partnership.
And so he wanted to file a lawsuit.
[phone rings]
GREG: Representing Brad Grey was Bert Fields,
assisted by his partner Chuck Shephard,
and then a senior associate, David Moriarty.
GREG: After I took Brad Grey's deposition,
we started hearing Pellicano's name.
We had a series of things where, well,
let's go talk to so-and-so witness.
And we'd get a hold of them,
and Pellicano had already been there.
AGENT: How many conversations would you estimate
you listened to for that investigation?
- Probably about 500 or more.
GREG: It seemed as if everything
that was on our side of the table, whatever it was,
was known to the other side.
GREG: And then the judge ruled
that we didn't have enough evidence
to prove a partnership.
That was the end of our case.
Several years go by.
I get a call one day
from an Assistant United States Attorney.
I went down to their office.
They took me to a conference room.
They handed me this brown manila envelope,
and they left.
And I opened it up, and I pulled out
typed notes or transcripts of conversations
between myself and my client.
- Mm.
[sighs] Yeah, this is it.
Only private reading notes.
cases were very convoluted - Sometimes, because the
and there were numerous people involved in these cases,
in order for me to keep a better track,
I did a file summary.
AGENT: Summaries of the content of wiretapped conversations?
- Correct.
- This document was someone taking notes...
from recorded conversations
involving Bo Zenga, my client,
his conversations with me and with other people.
"Regarding the second look deal, Greg says that everyone
"that sees this is going to say that Brad Grey
is a fucking criminal and should be locked up."
I definitely said that.
DOUGLAS JOHNSON: If you're a lawyer on the other side
of a case and you can listen to the conversations
between your opponents and their lawyers--
I mean, you can win almost every single case.
You would know what their strategy is.
You would know what they're going to settle for.
- Here's my comments about settlement.
"Greg says that cases like this typically get
settled for $3 to $7 million."
- I mean, you'd never overpay on a case, not even a dime.
REPORTER" The biggest names in Hollywood
are expecting the worst tonight as the fallout
from a wiretapping case has everyone wondering
whose dirty little secrets will come out next.
DANIEL: The RICO and wiretapping indictment
against the Pellicano enterprise
was unsealed and went public in early 2006.
GEORGE CARDONA: On February 1,
a federal grand jury returned under seal
an indictment against well-known
private investigator Anthony Pellicano
and six other defendants.
LIZ: Pellicano gets indicted with
people who worked in his criminal enterprise,
police officers, telephone employees, and a few clients.
ANCHOR: "Die Hard" director John McTiernan
has been charged with lying to the feds about his involvement
with Pellicano.
REPORTER: Late today, the grand jury handed up
another indictment, this one against
entertainment attorney Terry Christensen.
He's accused of hiring Pellicano to eavesdrop
on the former wife of billionaire investor
Kirk Kerkorian during a child support dispute in 2002.
DANIEL: There was a huge flurry of media coverage
and reporting speculation about what was to come
and whether additional defendants would be added.
ANCHOR: Some have testified before the grand jury,
including one-time super agent Michael Ovitz.
ANCHOR: Powerhouse Hollywood attorney Bert Fields
used Pellicano extensively.
He hasn't been indicted, but he said he was
brought in for questioning.
ANCHOR: And others still in the spotlight
for hiring Pellicano,
like Paramount Pictures chairman Brad Grey.
ANCHOR: I think what we're seeing
hitting Hollywood officially is the Pellicano virus.
And at this point, it seems like anybody
may be susceptible.
Tonight we take you inside
an incredible courtroom drama,
an LA story that's airing some of Hollywood's
dirtiest laundry.
ANCHOR: It involves a private eye who's
accused of spying on some of the biggest
names in show business.
- It was electric.
We've been building up to this day for years.
The entire courtroom was packed.
DANIEL: The trial ran as a very tight,
very professional jury trial
with one of the more unique aspects
being that Anthony Pellicano chose to represent himself.
- It just added a whole new twisted circus
to this whole thing.
- Because nobody knew the case better than me,
and why give a lawyer, number one,
you know, money for the inevitable?
At the end of the day, I was going to go to prison,
and I handled it myself.
DANIEL: We started the tri al with a recording
of Pellicano talking to a potential client.
It was Matt Williams, baseball player.
DANIEL: Williams never ended up hiring him to wiretap,
but Pellicano was offering his services.
ANTHONY: Well, I'm going to listen to things
that she's talking about.
- I'm going to listen to her calls.
I'm going to know what she's talking about.
- In my opening, I said Pellicano
was the single biggest informant in the case
because by recording his calls...
PERSON: May I ask who's calling?
ANTHONY: Anthony. PERSON: May I ask
who's calling? ANTHONY: Anthony.
It's Anthony. It's Anthony Pellicano.
- We were able to show his direct involvement
in that criminal conduct.
ALLISON: I blogged about the Pellicano trial every day.
I wrote, "Pellicano's trial defense strategy
"is to slowly torture the prosecution to death
"with his prolonged cross-examination
of even the most insignificant witnesses."
He pretended--it was sort of like TV cross-examination,
that he had scored a point when he hadn't and walked back
to his seat with, like, a jaunty swagger.
- Anthony had several defenses that
weren't necessarily defenses.
With respect to the acquisition
of confidential information,
his defense was "Is that really so bad?"
And with respect to wiretapping,
he claimed that the wiretapping program was
for legitimate purposes and that our evidence
insufficient to convict him of of wiretapping was wiretapping.
PERSON: Pellicano's buffoonery really became a distraction
from the seriousness of the allegations
against him, from the seriousness of what
the victims had been through.
And not only that, but he was allowed to question
these victims directly.
DOUGLAS: We represented the victims of Anthony Pellicano.
Some of them, I remember telling me,
I don't know how many people have heard my call.
It messed them up.
I know we had a couple of clients
who were never really the same and just became paranoid.
DANIEL: I felt for the victims having to really relive
their victimization and the violations
against them by having the perpetrator be up there,
questioning them about it
and trying to impugn their credibility on the stand.
- It was difficult and emotional.
And...I think I left a lot of information out
just because of...
being so afraid.
because I didn't want to cause - Because it was him, and
any more harm to anybody.
And I just wanted it all to go away and be over.
ANITA: The only thing I had left was the truth.
I mean, it was the facts of what happened.
Now I was facing him in court, and he was
trying to remove the truth.
I remember trying in my head not to relive stuff,
but I kept thinking about the assault.
And I kept shaking.
I was shaking so much that they had to stop the trial.
And I remember thinking, God, just help me be strong again.
- I don't know that he took pleasure
in revictimizing these people.
I think he took pleasure in being the center of attention.
JUDE GREEN: The day I went to testify...
I just stared him down.
I just thought, I can't wait for him to try
and say one nasty thing to me.
Because I will just pulverize him.
He was pacing back and forth.
And he's just asking me about the very thing that he did.
- She got up on the stand and screamed,
"It was you!" just like that.
And it wasn't me. I didn't do anything to her.
The only thing I did is to do a background check on her
in Aspen, Colorado.
That was it.
I never wiretapped her, never intimidated,
did nothing, no question about never went after her, never it.
- And when I was done, I stepped off the witness stand.
And then I was, like, mobbed.
It was just like, oh, you gave it to him, finally.
You know, I mean, everyone was just so excited.
AGENT: How many different federal court trials
did you testify at?
- Two.
DANIEL: Tarita Virtue was on the stand
for four or five days, hours and hours
of questioning by Pellicano.
She was visibly shaken by it.
I can't even imagine how grueling that must have been.
- She was supposedly one of the stars of the trial,
but all she was doing, you know, for the most
part is telling the truth.
I told everybody to tell the truth.
- Oh, yeah.
Employees, yes.
- Not so much. [laughs]
One of the things that was really disturbing
was the Ovitz testimony.
He came in as a government witness.
And the government didn't really ask him anything
about what he'd been up to.
- The government tried really hard to get Pellicano to flip,
to reveal what his clients knew and how far up the chain
it went.
But when Pellicano refused to do that,
the government called some of these clients
to testify against Pellicano.
At that point, they didn't really
seem to answer questions about what they knew
or their own culpability in this enterprise.
ALLISON: Clearly, it was because they were
testifying for the government.
And Pellicano wasn't going to ask them.
- Why in the world would I betray anybody?
Why would I break my word?
Why would I be disloyal?
Are you fucking crazy?
[voice fading] I would never do that.
- So why were they there?
DANIEL: Is it possible that many of these clients
who denied knowledge of threats and wiretapping
and everything else
really knew what Pellicano was doing?
Sure, you know?
But my personal opinion of what is possible or probable
isn't proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
KEVIN: With his highest-profile clients,
Pellicano structured it so we wouldn't have evidence.
PERSON: Pellicano told us that he did not
record some of his most important
or most trusted clients.
LIZ: It was almost luck that those tapes
still existed and were able to be seized by the government.
So what other evidence was out there of other crimes
from Anthony Pellicano and other people
involved in these crimes that was never known?
ALLISION: I think that by the time
the trial was about to end,
it was a foregone conclusion to everyone but Anthony
that he was about to get nailed.
ANTHONY: What I expected was a fair sentence.
I didn't get one.
ANCHOR: Anthony Pellicano is going to jail for spying
on the rich and famous.
Yesterday, Pellicano was sentenced
to 15 years in prison
for running a wiretapping operation.
- It was an incredibly satisfying moment,
particularly to get the sentences that we got.
it should be 150 years. - I thought
It should have been life without parole.
- I thought, I'm glad he's going to prison.
I'm glad that cop was going to prison.
- The real disappointment was who wasn't on trial.
And that has remained a disappointment to this day.
[somber music]
ANITA: There's people that Pellicano had on speed dial
that I don't think should be practicing law anymore.
- No, nobody knew for a fact. Absolutely not, no.
No clients. No--no attorneys, especially.
No, no.
- Okay.
You just said the first stupid thing, okay?
So you want to edit that out.
You're not going to name somebody.
That is not going to happen in this interview.
And you're assuming he knew. And you're wrong.
ALLISON: I was surprised that Bert Fields' law firm,
Greenberg Glusker, wasn't held more to account.
The bulk o f the cases were Bert Field cases.
To me, it seemed like a very big failure.
LIZ: Back during the investigation,
the FBI had announced that Bert Fields was a subject
of their investigation.
So there are a lot of reasons why people thought
that Bert Fields may be indicted.
One example is a Greenberg Glusker client
told the FBI that Bert Fields told him about
Pellicano's unorthodox methods.
He also described working with David Moriarty,
one of Bert Fields' junior associates,
and described them as having a wink-wink understanding
about Pellicano's methods.
DAVID: Well, I----
I apologize for not being in contact.
ANTHONY: Don't apologize about anything.
- They were playing this game of, don't tell me about it.
I don't want to know about it.
But they are very smart people.
Their whole life is about figuring out,
what do I infer from this? What does this tell me?
ALLISON: Back in the mid-'90s, Anthony Pellicano
made an application for his wiretapping device
to trademark it.
You know who did that application for him?
Bert Fields' firm, Greenberg Glusker.
♪ ♪
So--
- You have to understand, I made
no secret of what I was doing.
It was wiretapping software that I was going
to sell to the United States government
and other governments.
There was no question.
- No, no.
Because they knew I was involved
in audio surveillance counter-measures
and all kinds of other things.
And by the way, they didn't need that to be suspicious.
They had all kinds of other reasons to be suspicious.
- Well, because it's always--
like you said, it was an un-- I mean, a--
- An open secret that I did that.
GREG: In Hollywood there is this undercurrent
of not doing things on the straight and level.
Corruption combined with insecurity
combined with big egos--
it was a culture that this was fine
and this would be extra source of power
for the people in Hollywood.
And so the exposing of this had some impact.
But ultimately, it didn't bring down
the biggest power players.
[quiet music]
♪ ♪
- I'm not going to comment on my personal views
of whether there was enough evidence
for anybody who wasn't charged.
Ultimately, I was one voice in that decision.
But that's not an exoneration by any means.
PERSON: We didn't get a chance to interview Bert Fields
because he actually died the day
that we interviewed Pellicano for this documentary.
- I think it's worth noting that Bert Fields had written
two novels under a pen name featuring a dashing lawyer
who resembles himself and a private investigator
who resembles Anthony Pellicano.
And this private investigator mysteriously
knows the contents of other people's phone conversations
and says, "Don't ask me how I know.
You don't want to know."
- It was distressing, disgusting.
And I came into a country that's no longer patriotic,
a bunch of wimps and tattletales.
It's too much crybaby shit for me.
PERSON: Ev en though Pellicano doesn't have
a PI license anymore, that doesn't seem to have
stopped him from working as a fixer
for some prominent names in Hollywood.
He's done work for Joel Silver, the producer.
He's been hired by Daryl Katz, the billionaire.
LIZ: Pellicano told us that he had just
filmed a guest star role on the new HBO series
from the creator of "Euphoria."
He appeared on "Tucker Carlson."
- We are honored to have him join us in the set today.
Anthony Pellicano, thanks so much for joining us.
- Nice to be here.
LIZ: So it seems as if Hollywood
is opening its doors back up to Anthony Pellicano.
RON MEYER: We speak on a very regular basis.
He's one of the most stand-up people
that I've ever known in my life.
He went and did almost 17 years in prison
without ever giving anybody up.
Probably a lot of people should be deep in his debt.
- There's an open question as to how much money
Pellicano has and whether he was
ever paid off for his silence.
For exampl e, Bert Fields had admitted
to donating money to a trust fund for Anthony Pellicano.
But he threatened to sue anyone who
were to say that he donated money to Pellicano
to keep him quiet.
ANTHONY: When I came out, there were people
that came to my aid.
But I have to say to you so you understand clearly
that those people did not do that because I
did not rat on them.
They did it because they actually cared about me.
- No, I have no idea.
I have no idea.
I don't know.
You know, frankly, I--
always, I would say I don't care,
except I care because he went to jail for it.
I only know him and my relationship with him,
so I can't speak to what other people accuse him of
or what people have said he did or didn't do.
LINDA: It was really hard to pretend like
it wasn't happening,
not to recognize unfamiliar parked cars.
It was just--the fear was always there.
JUDE: My son James suffered the most
because he was old enough
to know there was something going on,
something very tense and ominous.
ANITA: I have a nonprofit now called Victims First.
I've worked behind the scenes on mass shootings.
It's keeping people on their feet
financially when they are so low that they
have to look up to see bottom.
You know, it changed my whole life.
Everything I do for victims is because of what happened
to me in the Pellicano case.
But I don't know how to stop looking over my shoulder.
I mean, when you feel like you're
going to be killed every day for 18 months,
you live with this trauma.
I don't want anybody to know where I'm at.
Nobody--my mom doesn't know where I'm at.
- No.
No.
No, no remorse.
And they like to hear that when you're in court.
Do you feel remorseful?
I did it.
I mean, to come out and be wimpy and go,
oh my God, I did this.
It's so terrible. No--fuck no. No.
- 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, 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.
[light music]
DANIEL: I know that Anthony Pellicano
thinks himself an honorable man.
Let's just say that he and I have very different
concepts of what honor is.
- If you had $25,000, Pellicano would give you his honor.
This guy's getting hired by rich people, powerful people
to solve really high-level problems.
And oftentimes, the people that were the targets
of these investigations were not powerful
and certainly didn't have the means or the resources
of his clients.
LIZ: The government went after an acute case,
but they did not go after the chronic problem
of powerful people getting an edge
and bending the rules to win, even if it hurts people.
PERSON: People might want to pooh-pooh this story
and think, well, why should we care about it
now all these years later?
Well, I would counter by saying because it's
all about the things we're talking about today.
It's about the misuse of power.
It's about personal privacy.
It's about the rule of law.
These are the things that make a society whole and safe.
And if we lose those, then we're in trouble.