A Times documentary team interviewed Anthony Pellicano, a former private investigator who solved the problems of the rich and powerful through whatever means necessary.
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Living in Los Angeles two decades ago, I had seen the headlines about Anthony Pellicano, the notorious private investigator who had defended people accused of rape, tapped phone lines, bribed police officers and was linked to a threat against a reporter in which a dead fish was left on her car.
But in 2008, Mr. Pellicano, who had already served time for illegal possession of hand grenades and C-4 explosives, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for wiretapping, racketeering, conspiracy and wire fraud and, seemingly, eternal infamy. He disappeared from public life — or so I thought.
In January 2021, I was reading an article in Variety and did a double take. “Anthony Pellicano Is Back in Business and Working for Joel Silver,” the headline read. (Mr. Silver is a longtime movie producer.) No way, I thought. How could this possibly be true?
Back when Mr. Pellicano was making headlines for bringing Cosa Nostra vibes to Beverly Hills, he seemed like an isolated offender, an invader of privacy on a grand scale, the likes of which would not be seen again soon. But as my reporting partner Liz Day and I re-examined the story, we realized that the issues his case raised remain relevant today.
We interviewed Mr. Pellicano for our two-part documentary series, “Sin Eater: The Crimes of Anthony Pellicano,” which premieres on Friday, March 10, on FX and Hulu. My first meeting with him last spring was supposed to be at a restaurant in Beverly Hills, but I tested positive for Covid-19. I offered to meet him masked, in a park, but he insisted on lunch.
“I’m not afraid of a little virus,” he said. (We met in the park.) Mr. Pellicano proved temperamental and ultimately stopped communicating with me. He agreed to participate in the documentary after a dinner with Liz.
In many ways, Mr. Pellicano, who was released from prison in 2019, is still a swaggering thug: flirting with a female producer one moment, swearing at her the next. But I was surprised to learn he was completely unrepentant. He said he had no remorse, and he did not believe he’d seriously hurt anyone. (His victims argue otherwise; some say they’ve never recovered.)
Mr. Pellicano lost his P.I. license years ago, but he said that didn’t matter. He described himself as a “fixer,” and there will always be people who need their problems solved. There will always be a job for someone like him.
Many of Mr. Pellicano’s clients were sophisticated lawyers who wanted an edge for their high-profile clients. By bribing police officers and recording phone calls, Mr. Pellicano was able to deliver confidential information that was often embarrassing or incriminating.
Mr. Pellicano himself told us his tactics were an open secret. And the intelligence he delivered was often so good it was almost as if he’d been in the room with the enemy.
But when his tactics were finally revealed in court, his clients said they were shocked — shocked! — to hear he was wiretapping. Mr. Pellicano didn’t contradict that, which probably earned him a tougher prison sentence than he would have gotten had he cooperated with the prosecution. He teased that he could have exposed some big clients — that not everyone was as ignorant, perhaps, as they claimed to be.
Mr. Pellicano’s wiretapping techniques may be obsolete now, but the kinds of services he offered are still in demand today. For example, the Los Angeles Police Department is conducting an internal investigation after it was revealed that a former captain leaked a woman’s police report to CBS, whose then chief executive, Les Moonves, she had accused of sexual assault. A Wall Street Journal reporter has accused a law firm of hiring overseas hackers who broke into his email and steal information that would later get him fired. In reporting for The Times, Liz revealed the extent to which Britney Spears’s privacy was invaded by a security firm, hired by her father, that built a surveillance apparatus around Ms. Spears and secretly recorded her in her bedroom.
We realized that, in many ways, Mr. Pellicano represented an analog version of digital privacy issues.
Using audio recordings and depositions that have never been broadcast, “Sin Eater” reveals Mr. Pellicano’s role in defending Michael Jackson from child molestation claims. For those who believe Mr. Jackson was innocent of any charges, Mr. Pellicano deserves more credit than nearly anyone.
For the comedian Chris Rock, Mr. Pellicano obtained a police report detailing a woman’s sexual assault accusation against him. (Mr. Rock was never charged and insisted his encounter with the woman was consensual.) In one recording between the two men in 2001, Mr. Pellicano explained to Mr. Rock that he should not have the report, and told Mr. Rock that they would need to change his story to effectively counter what the woman told police.
Mr. Rock didn’t express any objections to what Mr. Pellicano was saying. (Mr. Rock did not participate in the documentary, and his representatives did not respond to questions sent by email.)
Mr. Rock’s case made Liz and me wonder whether this is simply how the rich and powerful go about solving their problems — not with customary tools like law enforcement and the courts, but with “fixers” like Anthony Pellicano, whose methods are perhaps more effective and illicit. Though Mr. Pellicano destroyed or encrypted some evidence of wrongdoing, law enforcement seized many of his files, and that’s what prosecutors used to take him down — and what we used to make this documentary.
“Sin Eater” provides a voyeuristic look inside the real Hollywood machine. Through secret calls between Mr. Pellicano and clients like Mr. Rock and the Hollywood business titans Michael Ovitz and Brad Grey, viewers should get a clearer, though unsavory, sense of how some powerful people behave when they don’t think anyone is listening.
Watch “Sin Eater: The Crimes of Anthony Pellicano,” a new two-part documentary, on Friday, March 10, at 10 p.m. on FX and Hulu.
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