Hollywood private investigator Anthony Pellicano has been found guilty of 77 out of 78 charges including racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, and identity theft. (He was acquitted of a single count of unauthorized computer access. He still has a racketeering-related charge yet to be decided.) The case attracted much in show business circle because of the high-profile nature of some of Pellicano's clients, and also some of his victims. Among those who hired him included Brad Grey of Paramount Pictures and Michael Ovitz. Pellicano's downfall began with Ovitz hired him to "handle" a reporter named Anita Busch, who contacted the FBI after she "walked out to her Audi outside her home to find a dead fish under a pan, a hole in the windshield, and a note saying 'STOP.'" Pellicano also placed taps on Busch's phone, as well as on the telephones of Sylvester Stallone and Keith Carradine (the last at the behest of Carradine's ex-wife, who Pellicano was dating) and conducted a smear campaign against Garry Shandling in response to Shandling filing suit against his own former agent.
Prosecutor Daniel Sanders told the jury that "This case is not about Hollywood", and as Carla Hall notes in the Los Angeles Times, the government did its best to see to it that it wouldn't be about Hollywood by not charging or investigating Pellicano's rich, powerful employers, whose knowledge of just what he was up to remains shrouded in mystery. A few notables, such as Die Hard (and, more recently, Basic and The 13th Warrior) director John McTiernan, who thought it would be at least as good idea to lie to feds about the case as it was to remake Rollerball, were scooped up and convicted of charges related to Pellicano months ago, but most of the big names dragged into the case managed to steer clear of legal involvement. Charged alongside Pellicano were his associates and co-defendents Mark Arneson, a former member of the LAPD; retired telephone company field technician Ray Turner; computer expert Kevin Kachikian; and a former Las Vegas businessman, Abner Nicherie. As Carla Hall dryly puts it, "No one in the group was likely to be spotted dining at the Ivy or skiing in Aspen."