Wiretap info from Pellicano story

From: Eric Leonard <new..._at_sbcglobal.net>
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 11:12:45 -0700

Vanity Fair has posted a preview of a story in the June issue that provides the most detail to date on P.I. Anthony Pellicano's alleged wiretapping empire. Here's a relevant section, and you can read the entire piece at: http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/articles/060426fege01

So much for all our careful wire work...


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No one knows when Pellicano first tried to wiretap a telephone, but by the mid-1990s he seems to have been attempting to perfect his technique. Around 1995 he hired a self-taught computer programmer named Kevin Kachikian—who was also indicted in February—to create software that would intercept telephone calls. They named it Telesleuth. In November 1995, Pellicano had an attorney from Bert Fields's firm apply to trademark the name. Later, Kachikian developed another program, called Forensic Audio Sleuth, which was able to analyze and enhance audio recordings. Again using an attorney from Fields's firm, Pellicano applied for a trademark. Fields has said he didn't work on such matters, and a spokesman for his firm has said they believed the software was created to aid on cases Pellicano worked on for law-enforcement outfits.

By early 1997, Pellicano was apparently ready to use Telesleuth in earnest. To arrange the wiretaps, according to the indictment, he bribed two Pacific Bell workers—one was indicted in February. A former Pellicano employee explains that additional telephone wiring was clipped inside the box at the phone company. (It was never necessary to break into a location.) When a call came in, Telesleuth automatically recorded it and relayed it to a Macintosh computer in Pellicano's Sunset Boulevard offices. His indictment suggests that Telesleuth's first use was against a Los Angeles real-estate developer, Robert Maguire. Beginning around September 1997, Pellicano allegedly used the program to wiretap Mark Hughes, the late founder of Herbalife, who was then engaged in a nasty divorce.

According to former employees, the wiretapping operation became the secret heart of Pellicano's business—the one unique service he could market to clients. According to Pellicano's former executive vice president, Tarita Virtue, who described the wiretapping setup in a series of interviews with Vanity Fair, the single Macintosh soon became five, lined up in a small locked office Pellicano called "the War Room." Only Pellicano, Virtue, and Kachikian had access to the room, whose only other furniture was a row of filing cabinets. Pellicano and Virtue alone had codes to use the Macs. The operation had one drawback: the Macs could receive wiretap recordings only from their own, 310 area code. To tap phones in the 323, 213, 626, and 818 area codes, Virtue says, Pellicano had to rent an apartment in each where he could stash a Macintosh and a detachable hard drive. When one of these computers was used, Pellicano would switch out the hard drive every few days, bring it to his office, and download the recordings.

The recordings were typically crystal clear. The problem became the sheer volume of them—thousands and thousands of telephone conversations, everything from a target's confidential discussions with his attorney to chats with his orthodontist, according to Virtue. To home in on the most promising ones, Kachikian's software could graph a recording's volume; Pellicano could then go directly to a conversation in which his subject had raised his voice, often a sign that something emotional was being discussed. Virtue did most of the initial scanning. When a wiretap yielded something especially useful, she says, she forwarded it to Pellicano's computer with the data displayed in red lettering, signifying that it was urgent.

Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:22 CST