Opinion ID: 6500514
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Investigation and Takedown

Text: The party had to come to an end, and eventually the actions of the FirstPlus thieves caught up with them. While investigating a tip that Scarfo was again trying to gain control of the Philadelphia LCN, the Federal Bureau of Investigation became aware of the mob ties and suspicious circumstances surrounding the resignation and replacement of FirstPlus’s former board. As FBI agents dug deeper, they came to believe – rightly – that Pelullo and Scarfo were behind the FirstPlus takeover and would systematically steal from it. They obtained court permission to track the defendants’ locations through their cellphones and wiretap their calls over the course of several months. Among the calls that agents picked up were communications between Pelullo and his lawyers (Maxwell, McCarthy, and Donald Manno). To weed out any discussions protected by Pelullo’s attorney-client privilege, the government asked the District Court to review in camera the records of wiretaps assembled by a special “filter team” before they were transmitted to prosecutors 10 – all, of course, unbeknownst to Pelullo. The conspirators eventually came to suspect that they were under investigation. For example, while on a long drive from Dallas to deliver a gun to Scarfo’s house in New Jersey, 10 The filter team, which comprised both prosecutors and investigators, reviewed the contents of the intercepted calls between Pelullo and his lawyers to protect the attorney-client privilege. See infra Section III.B.1. The filter team sought court permission to transmit non-privileged communications to the prosecution team. Id. 19 John Maxwell suspected that the government had agents following him in a car and in a helicopter. The government’s investigation escalated on May 8, 2008. That day, the FBI executed search warrants at thirteen locations across the country, including FirstPlus’s offices in Texas and the defendants’ homes, offices, and law firms in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They also seized the plane, the Bentley, and the yacht, along with guns they found on board the yacht and more guns and ammunition found at Scarfo’s and Pelullo’s homes and Pelullo’s office. It took another three years for the government to obtain an indictment from a grand jury, but that day did arrive. In unpacking the evidence and building their case, prosecutors set up additional filter teams to review the evidence recovered from McCarthy’s and Manno’s law offices and to set aside anything that was privileged before turning the rest over to the team handling the prosecution of the defendants.