Categories: Courtroom Buzz
      Date: November 18, 2008
     Title: Sweeping Case Against Fumo Includes Immunity Grant For Housekeeper

Vince's housekeepeer testifies about his obsession with Oreck vaccum cleaners. The daily update from the Vince Fumo political corruption trial.

By Ralph Cipriano

The federal case against Vince Fumo is so extensive that the government dragged Vince’s housekeeper into court today to testify under a grant of immunity, so she could tell jurors about the senator’s obsession with Oreck vacuum cleaners.

During the political corruption trial of Fumo, now in its fifth week, government prosecutors have made much of Fumo’s preoccupation with power tools purchased with taxpayers’ money, including 19 Oreck vacuum cleaners.

So today in court, Nicole Barrett, Fumo’s housekeeper, testified that the former state senator had an Oreck vacuum cleaner stationed on every floor of his four-story, 33-room castle on Green St.

Barrett appeared reluctant to testify against the man whose castle she still cleans. But, as U.S. Attorney Robert Zauzmer explained to jurors, the government caught Barrett taking cash from people to clean houses (not the senator, he always paid with a check), so that’s how Barrett got into trouble with the government.

"I didn’t pay my taxes," Barrett admitted to Zauzmer. That’s why Barrett needed a grant of immunity to testify against Fumo, the prosecutor explained, so that nothing Barrett told the jury could be used against her.

It all began in 1995, Barrett testified, when she met Ruth Arnao, Fumo’s co-defendant while Barrett was working for a hairdresser, shampooing hair. Barrett said the hairdressing business was slowing down so she offered to clean Arnao’s row house in the 1100 block of Rodman Street. A few years later, in either 1999 or 2000, Barrett testified, Arnao took Barrett up on her offer.

Barrett was so good at housecleaning that soon she was doing work for Arnao's boss, cleaning Senator Fumo’s castle on Green St., as well as his district office. Barrett was paid $40 a day in cash by Arnao to clean her house for 3 or 4 hours, but when she started cleaning the state senator’s house, her pay jumped to $100 a day for 4 to 4 ½ hours of cleaning.

"Bigger house, more things to do," Barrett told prosecutor Zauzmer. Barrett then graduated to cleaning Fumo’s house two days a week, for $200. She also was working 2 to 2 ½ hours a week cleaning the senator’s district office at 1208 Tasker St.

When she finished cleaning the senator’s house, Barrett testified, she had to visit the senator’s office and ask a staffer, "Can I please get paid?" Then a Fumo staffer would write out a check for Barrett. The check was drawn on Philadelphia Writ Services, a company founded by Arnao’s husband, Mitch Rubin, a close Fumo friend.

When she cleaned Fumo’s district office, Barrett testified, she was paid by a check from the Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods. The nonprofit organization was founded by Fumo, supposedly to do good civic deeds, but according to the government, Fumo also used the nonprofit’s funds to buy lots of power tools, including those 19 Oreck vacuum cleaners.

Fumo is charged in a 139-count federal indictment with using state employees and contractors as servants, allowing him to lead a lavish lifestyle and allegedly defraud the state senate and a couple of nonprofits out of goods and services worth $3.5 million. The former state senator who served three decades in Harrisburg has pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud, obstruction of justice and filing false tax returns.

But the government’s massive onslaught against Fumo may have looked like overkill today with Barrett’s appearance in court. Jurors had to wonder how far the feds would go to nail Vince as Barrett testified under that grant of immunity about those Oreck vacuum cleaners.

Vince may have loved Orecks, the housekeeper told the jury, but she didn’t. That’s why she went out and bought her own personal favorite, a Thistle, to vacuum Castle Fumo, for which she was promptly reimbursed by Vince.

When it came time for cross-examination, Dennis Cogan, Fumo’s defense lawyer, got the housekeeper to admit that she had a soft spot for her employer.

Cogan asked Barrett if she was "fond of" Vince, and she said she was. Cogan asked if the imperial senator was "nice to her," and she agreed to that as well. And then, over the objections of the prosecutor, Cogan also got Barrett to tell the jury that when she found out she would have to testify against Fumo, she went to see him, and that Fumo’s advice was "to tell the truth."

Next up to cross-examine Barrett was Eddie Jacobs, representing Arnao. Jacobs had a single question for the witness that drew laughs from the jury.

So, Jacobs said, you cleaned a half-dozen people’s houses, and then he asked if it was true that "Ruth’s house was the tidiest?"

Yes, the housekeeper said with a smile.

The defense today also got through a potentially dangerous cross examination of Fumo’s former girlfriend. The government had put Dottie Egrie-Wilcox on the witness stand Monday to testify about how Fumo, her former louse of a boyfriend, had hired a private eye to tail her, and also had a spy device planted on her personal computer.

But rather than attack Egrie-Wilcox’s credibility, and appear to beat up on a witness who was a victim, Cogan used Egrie-Wilcox’s previous grand jury testimony to elicit sympathy for Vince.

Cogan got Egrie-Wilcox to admit that Fumo may have been grandiose as a state senator, but in his private life, as Egrie-Wilcox had previously testified to a grand jury, Fumo was so shy and inept that he was "socially retarded."

The capper on the government’s troubles today was when a computer consultant named Michael Podgorski took the stand to testify about his relationship with Vince. The witness got off to a good start as he testified about having to do personal favors such as showing up at Fumo’s house on a Sunday to install some "Barbie software" for the benefit of Fumo’s daughter Allie.

But then Podgorski became forgetful about details he had previously told FBI agents. Did the consultant tell the FBI that he had to install software for Allie Fumo on six separate occasions?

"No, I don’t recall saying that," Podgorski said. When Podgorski was assigned to equip Egrie-Wilcox with a state senate computer, the prosecutor asked, didn’t he recall telling FBI agents that it seemed crazy to be giving a state senate computer to a senator's girlfriend?

"I don’t recall saying that," Podgorski testified. He said he did such things "as a favor to the senator, as something extra," which had to displease the prosecutor. Throughout the trial, the government has hammered away at the theme that Vince made no distinctions between private and public services rendered to him, and that as a consequence, staffers were forced to do his bidding without making any distinctions of their own.

But Podgorski testified that he would still do favors for Vince. "I wouldn’t turn him down today," the technician told the prosecutor. Podgorski also testified that other state senators had asked him "to work on relatives’ computers," and he added, "I’ve turned them down."

Prosecutor Zauzmer questioned the computer technician on other favors he had done for Vince, such as driving one of the senator’s vehicles home from Martha’s Vineyard, while the senator was vacationing. Did Podgorksi remember telling FBI agents that the reason he drove the vehicle was that the senator’s regular drivers were sick of having to perform such tasks?

Podgorksi said he didn’t recall saying that, but if he did, "Maybe I was in a bad mood because I had to meet the FBI."

The prosecutor persisted with questions about that trip back home from Martha’s Vineyard. Didn’t Podgorksi remember telling FBI agents he was angry because it took him 12 hours to drive home from Martha’s Vineyard through a pouring rain?

What he really was upset about on that trip, Podgorski told the prosecutor, was this: "A bird shit on me," the computer consultant testified, as the courtroom erupted in laughter. "I mean right on the head."