Opparizio had one very big thing going for him in his effort to hide. Money. With enough money you can hide from anybody in this world and Opparizio knew it. He owned numerous homes in numerous states, multiple vehicles and even a private jet to help him connect quickly to all his dots. When he moved, whether it was from state to state or from Beverly Hills home to Beverly Hills office, he traveled behind a phalanx of security men.
He also had one thing going against him. Money. The vast wealth he had accumulated by carrying out the bidding of banks and other lenders had also given him an Achilles’ heel. He had acquired the tastes and desires of the super rich.
And that was how we eventually got him.
In the course of his efforts to locate Opparizio, Cisco Wojciechowski amassed a tremendous amount of information about his quarry’s profile. From this data a trap was carefully planned and executed to perfection. A glossy presentation package announcing the closed-bid auction of an Aldo Tinto painting was sent to Opparizio’s office in Beverly Hills. The package said the painting would be on view for interested bidders for only two hours beginning at 7 P.M. two nights hence in Studio Z at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. Bids would then be accepted until midnight.
The presentation looked professional and legitimate. The depiction of the painting had been lifted from an online art catalog that displayed private collections. We knew from a two-year-old profile of Opparizio in a bar journal that he had become a collector of second-tier painters and that the late Italian master Tinto was his obsession. When a man called the phone number on the portfolio, identified himself as a representative of Louis Opparizio and booked a private viewing of the painting, we had him.
At precisely the appointed time, the Opparizio entourage entered the old Red Car trolley station, which had been turned into an upscale gallery complex. While three sunglassed security men fanned out across the grounds, two more swept Gallery Z before giving the all-clear signal. Only then did Opparizio emerge from the stretch Mercedes.
Inside the gallery Opparizio was met by two women who disarmed him with their smiles and excitement about the arts and the painting he was about to see. One woman handed him a glass flute of Cristal to celebrate the moment. The other gave him a thick folded packet of documents on the painting’s pedigree and exhibition history. Because he held the champagne in one hand he could not open the documents. He was told he could read it all later because he must see the painting now before the next appointment. He was led into the viewing room where the piece sat on an ornate easel covered with a satin drape. A lone spotlight lit the center of the room. The women told him he could remove the drape himself and one of them took his glass of champagne. She wore long gloves.
Opparizio stepped forward, his hand raised in anticipation. He carefully pulled the satin off the frame. And there pinned to the board was the subpoena. Confused, he leaned forward to look, perhaps thinking this was still the Italian master’s work.
“You’ve been served, Mr. Opparizio,” Jennifer Aronson said. “You have the original in your hand.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, but he did.
“And the whole thing from the moment you drove in is on videotape,” said Lorna.
She stepped to the wall and hit the switch, bathing the entire room in light. She pointed to the two overhead cameras. Jennifer lifted the champagne flute as if giving a toast.
“We have your prints, too, if needed.”
She turned and raised a toast to one of the cameras.
“No,” Opparizio said.
“Yes,” Lorna said.
“We’ll see you in court,” Jennifer said.
The women headed to the side door of the gallery where a Lincoln driven by Cisco was waiting. Their job was done.
That was then, this was now. I sat in the Honorable Coleman Perry’s courtroom preparing to defend the service and validity of the Opparizio subpoena and the very heart of the defense’s case. My co-counsel, Jennifer Aronson, sat next to me at the defense table and next to her was our client, Lisa Trammel. At the opposing table sat Louis Opparizio and his two attorneys, Martin Zimmer and Landon Cross. Andrea Freeman was in a seat located back against the rail. As the prosecutor of the criminal case out of which this hearing arose, she was an interested party but this wasn’t her cause of action. Additionally, Detective Kurlen was in the courtroom, sitting three rows back in the gallery. His presence was a mystery to me.
The cause of action was Opparizio’s. He and his legal crew were out to quash the subpoena and prevent his participation in the trial. In strategizing how to do so they had thought it prudent to tip Freeman to the hearing in case the prosecution also saw merit in keeping Opparizio from the jury. Though largely there as a bystander, Freeman could step into the fray whenever she wanted and she knew that whether she joined in or not, the hearing would likely offer her a good look at the defense’s trial strategy.
It was the first time I saw Opparizio in person. He was a block of a man who somehow appeared as wide as he was tall. The skin on his face had been stretched tight by the scalpel or by years of anger. By the cut of his hair and of his suit, he looked like money. And he seemed to me to be the perfect straw man because he also looked like a man who could kill, or at least give the order to kill.
Opparizio’s lawyers had asked the judge to hold the hearing in camera-behind closed doors in his chambers-so that the details revealed would not reach the media and therefore possibly taint the jury pool that would assemble the following day. But everybody in the room knew that his lawyers were not being altruistic. A closed hearing guarded against details about Opparizio leaking to the press and informing something much larger than the jury pool. Public opinion.
I argued vigorously against closing the proceedings. I warned that such a move would cause public suspicion about the subsequent trial and this outweighed any possible taint of the jury pool. Elected to the bench, Perry was ever mindful of public perception. He agreed with me and declared the hearing open to the public. Score a big one for me. My prevailing on that one argument probably saved the entire case for the defense.
Not a lot of the media was there but there was enough for what I needed. Reporters from the Los Angeles Business Journal and the L.A. Times were in the front row. A freelance video man who sold footage to all the networks was in the empty jury box with his camera. I had tipped him to the hearing and told him to be there. I figured that between the print media and the lone TV camera, there would be enough pressure on Opparizio to force the outcome I was looking for.
After dispensing with the request to hide behind closed doors, the judge got down to business.
“Mr. Zimmer, you have filed a motion to quash the subpoena of Louis Opparizio in the matter of California versus Trammel. Why don’t you state your case, sir?”
Zimmer looked like a lawyer who had been around the block a few times and usually got to carry his enemies home in his briefcase. He stood to respond to the judge.
“We would love to address the court on this matter, Your Honor. I am going to speak first to the facts of the service of the subpoena itself and then my colleague, Mr. Cross, will discuss the other issue for which we seek relief.”
Zimmer then proceeded to claim that my office had engaged in mail fraud in laying the trap that resulted in Opparizio being served a subpoena. He said that the glossy brochure that had baited his client was an instrument of fraud and its placement in the U.S. mail constituted a felony that invalidated any action that followed, such as service of the subpoena. He further asked that the defense be penalized by being disallowed from any subsequent effort to subpoena Opparizio to testify.