Stinging portrait of Fumo as crook

A derisive federal prosecutor ripped into former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo for a second day yesterday, mocking him for telling "wildly shifting tales" as the FBI zeroed in on how he allegedly looted a South Philadelphia charity.

The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert A. Zauzmer, said that Fumo kept changing his defenses to hide what Zauzmer told jurors was actually something simple but ugly: "fraud on a grand scale."

"Sen. Fumo set up an organization to do work in the community, and he skimmed from it. His loyal aide helped him do it," Zauzmer said, focusing on the benefits, from luxury cars to thousands of dollars in tools, that Fumo received from Citizens' Alliance for Better Neighborhoods.

Zauzmer, in the second day of his closing argument, denounced Fumo as a hyper-intelligent, manipulative politician who cooked up scams that were "very clever, very deliberate, very fraudulent."

He described codefendant Ruth Arnao, the onetime executive director of Citizens' Alliance, as a flunky paid as much as $150,000 a year to be Fumo's rubber stamp.

Zauzmer is set to resume his summation this morning - his third day. And then defense attorney Edwin J. Jacobs Jr., who represents Arnao, is poised to deliver his closing argument.

Fumo's lead defense lawyer, Dennis J. Cogan, is likely to give his summation tomorrow.

Fumo, 65, who was once one of the most powerful Democrats in Harrisburg and in Philadelphia, and Arnao are charged in a sweeping indictment with defrauding Citizens' Alliance by getting it to spend a total of $1.4 million to buy tools, consumer goods, and other items, and to finance political polls and a lawsuit against a Fumo foe.

Fumo also is charged with a $2 million fraud of the Senate by getting employees to do personal and political errands on state time; getting $115,000 in free yacht cruises from the Independence Seaport Museum; and obstructing justice.

After the FBI and the press began looking into Fumo's ties to Citizens' Alliance, Zauzmer said, Fumo offered no fewer than three explanations for his role with the group.

At first, the prosecutor said, Fumo told the public that he had little to do with running the organization and took no benefits from it.

Then, Zauzmer said, Fumo's lawyer said in his opening address that the former senator had taken benefits, but was entitled to them much as professional fund-raisers get a share of the money they muster.

Finally, Zauzmer said, Fumo testified that that he was the de facto executive director of Citizens' Alliance - Arnao's title aside - and had been given "gifts and perks" as a result.

Zauzmer pounced on each of these explanations, dismissing them as "one preposterous story after another."

In media interviews when the Citizens' Alliance scandal first broke, Fumo said he had gotten no benefit from it.

Zauzmer said Fumo was forced to jettison this position after FBI Agent Vicki Humphreys followed the money - using store receipts, credit-card bills, and bank records to reconstruct 5,000 suspicious purchases made with charity money.

Confronted with this evidence, Fumo admitted last week that he had gotten $63,000 in tools and consumer goods from the charity.

Never in Fumo's "wildest dreams," Zauzmer said, did the senator expect Agent Humphreys and her colleague, Kathleen T. McAfee, to dig that deeply into the financial issues.

Once the FBI had done its work, Zauzmer said, Fumo had to change his story.

"It happened because the government proved that this defense was completely false," Zauzmer said.

Next, Fumo's lawyer said in the opening address that it was lawful for Fumo to get these items because he had raised millions for the charity, notably by pressuring the chairman of Peco Energy Co. to give it $17 million.

Zauzmer contended that this defense began to collapse after a former top Peco executive, Thomas Hill, testified that the utility coughed up the money solely because of Fumo's clout as an elected official.

No "average guy on the street" negotiates one-on-one with Peco's chairman, Zauzmer said, adding: "He's in that meeting because he's a senator."

Zauzmer said the defense took a fatal blow when one of Fumo's closest aides, legislative counsel Christopher Craig, testified that taxpayers paid part of his legal expenses to work on the Peco matter.

Reminding the jury that Craig wept on the stand, the prosecutor suggested that the former aide, too, was a Fumo victim.

"As he cried, he told you he never knew that Mr. Fumo got anything out of this," Zauzmer said.

Zauzmer was at his most caustic when he lit into the former senator's most recent elaboration of the benefits.

On the stand, Fumo had said that he got the items in return for running the charitable organization.

"This is for the work I did. I did an enormous work," he told jurors.

At the same time, Fumo testified that the money was not compensation and thus did not need to be reported on his taxes on state financial-disclosure forms.

Nor, Fumo said, was the money a gift under the strict definitions of Pennsylvania law for public officials. Thus, he said, he didn't report it on the gift section of the disclosure form, either.

Zauzmer said this was pure sophistry. He dismissed it as possibly "the most ridiculous defense put forward in an American courtroom in quite some time."

In general, he said, Fumo in his explanations had taken jurors into "new realms of false testimony."

In fact, Zauzmer said repeatedly, Fumo's misconduct boiled down to theft.

"This is no different from any employee of any organization deciding to skim for himself," Zauzmer said.

The Inquirer's live blog from the Fumo trial is at: http://go.philly.com/fumoblog

To read more about the former state senator, go to: http://go.philly.com/fumo

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