AP
“I have no intention of appealing anything,” Anthony Pellicano told a federal judge today as the disgraced former Hollywood private investigator was re-sentenced.
In a short hearing in front of U.S. District Judge Dale Fisher on Monday morning, Pellicano joined in via videoconference to learn he will remain in the big house until March 2019. As prosecutors had requested, Pellicano was re-sentenced to 180 months for violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act with three years supervised release when he does get out and millions in fines. Succinct in his words, the ex-P.I. had bandages on his head and was wearing dark shades on the video screen in court in DTLA.
A preying purveyor of the Hollywood dark arts for a number of big name clients like Tom Cruise over the years, Pellicano was sentenced in 2008 facing allegations of computer hacking, illegal wiretapping, threats and harassment on behalf of former CAA boss Michael Ovitz. He was set to serve a 15-year prison term in Texas but improper jury instructions complicated the matter. While rejecting the bulk of his latest appeal, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2015 vacated portions of Pellicano’s sentence after tossing his convictions on computer fraud and hacking. After various delay’s, today’s hearing was that re-sentencing.
Pellicano will be back in court later this year as a part of the Nov. 13 starting trial of Deadline film editor Anita Busch’s invasion of privacy, assault and intent of emotional distress case against Ovitz in L.A. Superior Court.
Looking into the career and machinations of Ovitz, once considered the most powerful man in Tinseltown, in 2002 while at the L. A. Times, Busch faced a dead fish on the shattered front window of her car and a message that said, “Stop.” Busch was subjected to intimidation, hacking of her phone and computers and more.
Winding through the courts over the past decade, the accusation has been that Ovitz was behind Pellicano’s harassment and intimidation of Busch due to his dislike of the stories being written and pursued about him. Tape recordings unearthed in the investigation of Pellicano revealed conversations between Ovitz and the investigator in which the former was complaining strongly about being in such a media spotlight.