Fumo defense grills private eye

State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo's defense lawyer struck back hard against a key prosecution witness in his federal trial yesterday, using FBI interview notes to suggest that a private detective had shifted his story to damage the veteran legislator.

In sensational testimony that began Monday, private detective Frank D. Wallace said he investigated Fumo's ex-girlfriends and political enemies, and was paid for that work by taxpayers.

But Fumo's lawyer, Dennis J. Cogan, confronted the private eye yesterday with FBI notes from a 2006 interview that quoted him as saying he did such snooping "free of charge."

In the sweeping federal indictment against Fumo, a grand jury charged the Philadelphia Democratic powerbroker with defrauding the Senate by paying Wallace, with state money, more than $215,000 over several years to do a mix of investigations, some on legislative issues but most involving political or personal matters.

Yesterday, Wallace detailed another lurid assignment - the investigation of the new boyfriend of yet another of the senator's former girlfriends. He added that it seemed to him that Fumo and his aides tried to concoct a cover story to disguise the nature of his work.

As a prosecution witness yesterday morning, Wallace told the jury that he took Fumo's word that his assignments were legitimate because Fumo was a lawyer, a longtime legislator, and "a member of Mensa."

But Cogan pointed out that FBI agents, in their first interview with Wallace in May 2006, noted that Wallace told them he "recognized the impropriety of charging the state Senate for non-Senate work."

As a result, the FBI said, Wallace told them that "the purely personal and political work that Wallace undertook was done free of charge."

"He could have billed Fumo, but didn't because in his view he was expected to do it as a condition of keeping his contract," the FBI said in a summary of the interview that Cogan read to the jury.

Cogan noted that Wallace later obtained a grant of immunity from prosecution, and he asked the veteran investigator whether prosecutors had told him he would be indicted on perjury charges unless he changed his account.

Wallace coolly denied any such threat.

He also said the FBI interview notes were inaccurate.

In a pretrial hearing last year, defense attorneys asked FBI Agent Vicki Humphreys whether "Mr. Wallace's story changed over time."

Humphreys said the May 2006 interview was the first with the detective and added: "Perhaps my understanding of the story changed after several meetings with Mr. Wallace."

Wrapping up his direct testimony yesterday, Wallace said that at Fumo's request, in 2006 he investigated a 43-year-old New Jersey man who was dating a woman who had broken up with the senator.

The government introduced as evidence Wallace's e-mail containing his findings. It listed the man's birth date and Social Security number, the value of his house, and details of his bankruptcy and debts.

The target "is not an American citizen. He was born in Italy, but is here legally," Wallace wrote Fumo.

Wallace learned that the man had been arrested 13 years earlier on charges of "swindling and cheating" a casino but had been placed in a "diversion program" that spared him a trial.

According to another e-mail, John Hawkins, a former Fumo aide working as a lobbyist, also gathered information on the same man.

Hawkins moved in the same circles as the quarry. So Fumo urged, "You should try to 'befriend' him. He must be out there at one of your hangouts!" Fumo added a smiley face at the end of the note.

When reached by telephone last night, Hawkins declined to comment.

On Monday, Wallace testified that he had conducted previous probes of men dating another of Fumo's former girlfriends and his second ex-wife.

For its part, the defense tried to explain Fumo's assignments. Edwin J. Jacobs Jr., a lawyer for Ruth Arnao, Fumo's codefendant, characterized Fumo as "a lovesick guy."

Wallace also testified that Fumo responded to his investigative report on the New Jersey man by writing back: "Thank you for doing me this favor."

According to Wallace, he found that remark suspicious. It came at a time when the FBI probe of Fumo was under way, Wallace said.

He added that the work was not a favor and that Fumo had never before called it that. "I considered it part of my contract," he told the jury.

The private eye also said that on one occasion in late 2004, Fumo's former chief of staff Charles Hoffman paid him $5,000 out of the senator's campaign funds.

In delivering the check, Hoffman mentioned the federal investigation, Wallace added.

"I took this check for $5,000 as some kind of attempt to cover up," Wallace said.

Hoffman, who is retired, could not be found for comment yesterday.