Categories: Courtroom Buzz
      Date: January 13, 2009
     Title: Government Witness Blows Himself Up

The prosecution case takes a hit in the Vince Fumo political corruption trial

By Ralph Cipriano

What do you do when one of your star witnesses turns himself into a suicide bomber? Government prosecutors in the Vince Fumo political corruption trial stood before Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter today and outlined a damage control plan.

Government prosecutors found out last Friday that a guy they thought was a cooperating witness, Leonard P. Luchko, a former Fumo computer consultant, had been sending thousands of emails to Fumo, co-defendant Ruth Arnao and 16 others associated with the former state senator. So the prosecutors told the judge today that it might not make much sense for the government to call Luchko as a witness.

Luchko had pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and had agreed to testify against his old boss, but he apparently did not agree to stop fraternizing with the enemy. So the government reached into their stable of cooperating witnesses, and produced yet another former Fumo computer consultant, Mark Eister, who was on the receiving end of many of those Luchko emails that outlined how Camp Fumo was going to clean up its act after they learned that the FBI was on their tail.

Dennis Cogan, Fumo’s defense lawyer, stood before the judge today and said he was nowhere near reading through the thousands of Luchko emails that the government had recently turned over to him. Cogan, however, referred to the 19-inch high stack of documents as a "treasure trove of materials" and told the judge that the defense was very interested in seeing Luchko take the stand.

Prosecutor Robert Zauzmer then told the judge that the email correspondence began in 2006 and ran "even up to last week." He said much of the material was duplicative, as Luchko had often sent similar notes to his former boss and many former co-workers.

Luchko had also been posting messages on the internet, including philly.com, under several pseudonyms including Justice4All. The Inquirer, in stories published today, said many of the messages were pro-Fumo, and included material like: "Am I a Fumo fan? You bet I am." Another Luchko missive asserted that government prosecutors "wanted Fumo at ANY cost and this is a classic example of throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks."

Luchko’s problem is he has not been sentenced yet, and the government prosecutors will have their say about his lack of cooperation when it’s Luchko’s turn to face the judge.

"Really, this goes to Mr. Luchko’s credibility," Zauzmer told the judge. He conceded that regarding the emails sent out by Luchko, "they (the defense) have plenty to work with." Zauzmer also told the judge that for starters, the government planned to introduce about 60 of those Luchko emails as evidence, and Cogan indicated that he would object to about ten of them.

Judge Buckwalter said he wanted to review the emails himself before deciding on admissibility. The judge then told the government to proceed with Eister as its next witness. The judge also decided to call off court tomorrow so the defense would have extra time to prepare for Eister’s cross-examination.

Eister subsequently took the stand to outline his own cooperating agreement with the government. He has already pleaded guilty to seven charges, including five counts of obstruction of justice, and faces anywhere from three to seven years in prison. Prosecutor John Pease asked Eister if he was hoping for leniency from the government in exchange for testifying against his old boss.

"I’m hoping for fairness," Eister replied.

Fumo is charged in a 139-count federal indictment with using state contractors and employees such as Eister as servants, allowing Fumo to lead a lavish lifestyle and defraud the state Senate and two nonprofit agencies 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.


Eister testified how his assignments included helping move Fumo’s hot tub. He said he thought the request was strange. "I was computer support staff, not the grounds crew." He also testified how he set up a computer program at Luchko’s request that would copy the email of Dottie Egrie, then Fumo’s girlfriend, and pass copies of her emails on to the senator. At the time, Fumo had given Egrie her own personal laptop, courtesy of the state Senate.

Eister testified how on March 25, 2002, he was asked by Luchko to take an inventory of email at the Fumo office. "Listen up, this is what he wants," the email from Luchko began. Luchko then requested that Eister figure out how much email was being stored, by whom, and how much of the stored email referred to Fumo.

Eister responded that it was possible to figure out how much email was being stored, and by whom, but that it was against ethical standards for himself as the email administrator to begin snooping into people’s email accounts.

In December, 2003, Luchko sent another email to Eister, telling him to prepare to do a "DOD wipe" on some computer information, meaning a computer clean-up that would meet Department of Defense standards. "I don’t know what’s in the wind, but something is up," Luchko wrote in the email.

The next month, Jan. 25, 2004, the bomb dropped, as a front page story in the Sunday Inquirer revealed that the FBI was investigating Fumo. "The FBI probe into the senator really set him off," Luchko said of Fumo in an email to Eister. "He wants the blackberries wiped."

Eister testified that he was instructed to go to Harrisburg and wipe clean the blackberries belonging to all staffers. "It was an inconvenience, but it had to be done," Eister testified. "A wipe wasn’t a clean thing, it could take hours."

Eister also set up a program that would scrub email from the server in Fumo’s Harrisburg office. He testified that he set up the program at the end of one business day, and by 10 p.m., the program was still wiping out emails.

Eister testified that this process was known as "wipe the server." He said it was done at the request of Fumo, "in response to the article about the FBI investigation." Eister told the prosecutor he also wiped all the laptops in the Harrisburg office.

"It was tense," in the office at the time, Eister testified. "The water cooler chatter "went from talking about sports to black humor."