Pubdate: Thu, 15 Feb 2001
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053
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Author: RICHARD A. SERRANO, STEPHEN BRAUN, Times Staff Writers

VIGNALI CASE BUILT ON INFORMANTS, WIRETAPS

Commutation: Dealer who received controversial clemency was portrayed 
at his trial as a key financier of a cocaine pipeline.

MINNEAPOLIS--The 1994 case against Carlos Vignali, whom President 
Clinton freed last month after appeals from prominent Los Angeles 
politicians, was built on the testimony of informants and federal 
wiretaps, which convinced a jury that he had provided large sums of 
cash to purchase cocaine for sale in Minnesota.

About 800 pounds of cocaine were mailed in the early 1990s from 
Southern California to Minneapolis. In one telephone recording, 
Vignali discussed a successful drug deal with two of his partners, 
boasting: "It's going to be like that. Ain't never going to be a 
problem."

Later, talking about 15 pounds of cocaine that was missing, Vignali 
complained: "Get that right back. . . . Kick anybody down. You guys 
should roll right up in there and get it."

The trial narrative, reviewed by The Times on Wednesday, was 
contained in boxes of trial transcripts and other court documents at 
the federal courthouse here. It reveals a government case built 
almost entirely upon wiretaps and the testimony of informants, who 
turned against Vignali in hopes of winning lighter sentences. The 
government portrayed Vignali as one of the key financiers of the 
cocaine pipeline from Los Angeles to Minneapolis. He was described as 
a young man flush with cash, who clinched his deals in cell phone 
conversations and sought to meld with tough-talking drug hustlers.

Among those who lobbied on Vignali's behalf were former Assembly 
Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los 
Angeles), former U.S. Rep. Esteban Torres and Roman Catholic Cardinal 
Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles. Most asked for further review of 
Vignali's case, though some went further. Villaraigosa, for instance, 
claimed that Vignali had been wrongly convicted. Villaraigosa and 
Mahony recently have expressed regret at involving themselves in the 
case.

Horacio Vignali, father of Carlos Vignali and a well-connected Los 
Angeles businessman, had asked them to contact the White House on his 
son's behalf, most of the letter writers said.

Of the 30 defendants indicted on charges of involvement in the drug 
ring, which converted the cocaine powder from Los Angeles to crack 
cocaine in Minneapolis, all but one were convicted or pleaded guilty. 
The jury convicted Vignali on three counts of conspiracy and cocaine 
distribution and acquitted him of a fourth count.

While prosecutors have said that Vignali was a central figure in the 
conspiracy, U.S. District Judge David S. Doty, who has criticized 
Clinton's decision to commute Vignali's sentence, cautioned at the 
1995 sentencing that he was not "an organizer, leader or manager."

Still, the judge sentenced Vignali to 15 years, one of the harshest 
sentences handed down in the case. Clinton commuted the sentence 
after Vignali had served six years. In an interview Wednesday, Doty 
said that Vignali "provided funds to the conspiracy, provided places 
and was involved in the direct transfers. . . . He was a big player. 
He was one of the top two or three defendants."

Andrew Dunne, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Vignali and 
who advised the Justice Department against commuting his sentence, 
said that "he was clearly a key player. . . . He never said, 'I'm 
sorry.' "

Vignali, who testified in his own defense, said that he thought he 
was loaning money to friends for an investment with a group of 
basketball players. He and his father, who also testified, said that 
his son had had much of the money since childhood, when he would 
lovingly iron hundred-dollar bills and keep the crisp cash stacked 
neatly in his bedroom closet.

"I don't understand," Carlos Vignali said on the witness stand. "What 
do you mean, drug money?"

Dunne told the jury that this account was absurd. "I submit to you 
that's the most preposterous story I have every heard," he said.

His father testified that ready cash had always been a central part 
of the way he had done business in the auto body shop industry, one 
of several of his business ventures, including real estate.

"Cash is a way of making money when nobody else can," said Horacio 
Vignali, who bragged about his wealth. Since his son's arrest, he has 
contributed $160,000 to federal and state politicians in California 
and elsewhere.

"If I have the right amount of cash and I go to an auction, or I 
happen to see somebody with a for-sale sign on the street and I pull 
them over and we start dealing about the price, if I have the cash, I 
buy the car," the father testified.

"If I don't have the cash, somebody else buys the car. So it gives 
you an advantage."

He said of his son: "I treated him like my best friend, my partner, 
anything he needed, I would always provide for him, always. It 
doesn't matter what, I always provided for him."

The defendant's lawyer, Danny Davis of Los Angeles, told the jury how 
Carlos Vignali worked at his father's auto body shop and was more 
interested in his girlfriend and pursuing a career in rap music than 
in becoming involved with drug dealers far away in Minnesota.

"He is a product of his father's grand energy," Davis said. "He is a 
person who deals with everyone who comes in that shop as well. Carlos 
Vignali, the client here, is about cars, he is about music and he is 
about a girlfriend."

Carlos Vignali was indicted with others in the case in December 1993. 
The group consisted largely of Minnesota street characters with gang 
nicknames such as J-Bone, Binky and Lepp.

Vignali, a high school dropout, was known as C-Low, though it was a 
moniker he denied at trial. On a tape of the phone taps, he and 
others involved in the ring referred to drugs as "love." An informant 
testified that Vignali bragged about his role in an Eazy-E rap video, 
"Easy-E, Only If You Want It."

When prosecutors introduced the video into evidence, saying there was 
both a clean and raunchy version, the judge said, "I hope you have 
the clean one here."

In the video, Vignali looked daunting, according to Dunne. "He had a 
shaved head, goatee, fierce-looking," the prosecutor said.

Vignali was arrested in Los Angeles and released when his father 
posted $250,000 bail. He was the only defendant released on bail 
during the six-week trial. In the courtroom, he wore nice suits and 
appeared clean-cut, with his hair grown out and styled.

At one point, Denise Reilly, Dunne's assistant prosecutor, observed 
that Vignali "has been sent to charm school. . . . He's had a 
make-over."

Dunne and Reilly outlined the government's case against Vignali.

Dunne told the jury that, even though drugs were not found on 
Vignali, he was guilty nonetheless. "Carlos Vignali didn't have to 
physically ship [drug] packages to be guilty under the aiding and 
abetting law," he said.

He added: "This case is about cocaine and money, lots of cocaine and 
lots of money."

There were 50 witnesses in the trial, and some testified that 
36-ounce bricks of cocaine were strapped onto people's bodies when 
they flew to Minneapolis. Others said that money and drugs were flown 
on planes, shipped in the mail or wired via Western Union.

Reilly said that in October 1993, two of the defendants arranged for 
6 kilograms, or about 15 pounds, of cocaine to be sent to 
Minneapolis. "Those kilograms came from Carlos Vignali," she said.

In his own testimony, Vignali denied any involvement with drugs. Most 
of his answers to questions from attorneys were short, blunt and 
spare denials.

"Did you knowingly participate, aid or assist anyone in a cocaine 
drug transaction?" asked his lawyer, Davis.

Vignali answered, "No, I did not."

He said that he met the other defendants at his father's auto body 
shop. "There was a big business deal coming down," he said he was 
told, involving some basketball players. He said the visitors wanted 
to borrow money from him to invest in the deal.

"I didn't know it was drugs, though," he testified.

He said that at the time he had an interest in a company called 
Fellon Records and was pursuing those interests while working at his 
father's shop and had no inclination to work with drug dealers.

His father testified that he had owned the shop in downtown Los 
Angeles since 1970. He was called to the stand by his son's lawyer, 
hoping to show that father and son did quite well at the shop and 
that Carlos did not need outside income from drug deals.

Horacio Vignali said that his son "always" shared in the profits. "I 
pay him with my own personal checks," the father said. "Sometimes I 
pay him two, three, four hundred dollars cash . . . since he was 14 
years old."

Horacio Vignali said that he also gave Carlos cash to invest in his 
music pursuits.

"Somehow, a son or a daughter, they have the ability of convincing 
parents that it is a good deal."

Further, he said, he and his son had been involved in extensive real 
estate deals and other ventures, some worth more than $1.5 million. 
He said they lived in Malibu near actor Tom Cruise and comedian 
Whoopi Goldberg, and later purchased the home of actor Sylvester 
Stallone. He put the price of the home then at $7 million.

Horacio Vignali also said that Carlos' older brother, Tony, has had 
his own difficulties.

He said Tony left home when he refused to stop using drugs, that "he 
was going to do whatever he was going to do." He said Tony had a "big 
problem" with drugs and that a daughter, Lisa, had also battled drugs.

His point was that Carlos would have seen firsthand the dangers of drugs.

"You don't want to see him go to jail, do you?" Reilly asked at one point.

"I want to see guilty people go to jail," Horacio Vignali said.

"I asked you if you wanted to see your son go to jail," Reilly persisted.

"No," Vignali said, "I do not."
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