Jefferson Parish Courthouse corruption investigation

FBI records shed light on Jefferson Parish Courthouse corruption investigation
By Drew Broach, The Times-Picayune

The FBI's nine-year inquiry into Jefferson Parish Courthouse corruption and the ensuing prosecutions convicted 14 people of federal crimes, imprisoned two judges and removed a third from office through impeachment. And it grew out of a simple tip that the Metropolitan Crime Commission received on June 15, 1998, according to FBI records.

On that day, a disgruntled bail bonds agent unloaded the dirt on the dominant bonding company in Gretna, Bail Bonds Unlimited, telling a crime commission investigator that owner Louis Marcotte III was paying off judges and justices of the peace, covering one's gambling debt and picking up the tab for their vacations, as well as buying food and drinks for the sheriff's deputies who worked in the parish jail. In return, says a crime commission summary of the interview, "Bail Bonds Unlimited is never turned down for any request they make of a judge."

Intrigued, the FBI soon launched what came to be a relentless investigation that employed live and electronic surveillance, an undercover agent from Brownsville, Texas, and covert trips to Biloxi, Miss., and Las Vegas.

Those are among the tidbits found in newly released FBI records of its investigation, which sent district judges Ronald Bodenheimer and Alan Green to prison, obtained guilty pleas from 12 others, including Sheriff's Office jailers, and culminated last December with the Senate kicking U.S. District Judge Thomas Porteous out of office.

The FBI began releasing the records this month in response to a four-year Freedom of Information Act effort by The Times-Picayune. The first 676 pages, although heavily redacted and often less illuminating than previously disclosed aspects of the investigation, nonetheless provide a few new details.

They suggest the FBI traces its investigation to the 1998 tip that the Metropolitan Crime Commission passed on to the bureau. With some initial spade work and the help of a cooperating witness, who secretly wired up to record conversations with others, federal agents came to hypothesize that Bail Bonds Unlimited was paying judges, lawyers and jailers in order to help it boost its business and freeze out competitors.

The cooperating witness' name is masked in the released records, but the circumstances suggest it was Martha Sassone, a state district judge who was suspicious of Bail Bonds Unlimited and Marcotte. Sassone had just lost a 1998 race for the state appeals court in Gretna to District Judge Susan Chehardy, whose 1994 wedding to lawyer Bruce Netterville included Marcotte as best man. The Times-Picayune has previously disclosed Sassone's role in the investigation.

THE FBI RECORDS
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•Part 3

By Jan. 26, 1999, the special agent in charge of the New Orleans office, Charles Mathews III, had seen enough preliminary evidence to authorize a full investigation, the records show, and the inquiry received its code name: Operation Wrinkled Robe. Two years earlier, when Mathews took command of the FBI office in New Orleans, he told his public corruption supervisor, Charles McGinty, that he wanted "high impact" cases. This would be one.

It become obvious within five months that the investigators were onto something big. One analyst determined that Bail Bonds Unlimited had insurance agreements with bond agents throughout Louisiana and surmised, according to a June 22 handwritten memo, "If this isn't racketeering, I don't know what is."

The early phase seems to have centered on laying the investigation's groundwork, including its budget and accounting. Agents also began obtaining pen registers, to determine what numbers were called from certain suspect phones, and securing various approvals from headquarters. U.S. Attorney Eddie Jordan signed off on use of undercover techniques on March 1. And a conference call was held April 28 with Carolyn Dineen King of Houston, who was chief judge of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. King appointed then-Chief Judge A.J. "Buddy" McNamara of the U.S. District Court in New Orleans to handle requests for court orders during the investigation.

In July, agents set up surveillance at the Beau Rivage hotel and casino in Biloxi, having heard that one of the subjects of its investigation would be there on someone else's nickel, the FBI records say. That was during a convention of bail bond agents, where Bail Bonds Unlimited spent $541 to enter Green, Bodenheimer and Porteous in a deep-sea fishing tournament and $963 on Cirque du Soleil tickets for Green, Bodenheimer, state District Judge Kernan "Skip" Hand and Justice of the Peace Steve Mortillaro and their wives, according to company records that were introduced at Green's criminal trial. Green and Porteous skipped the fishing tournament, so Hand and Mortillaro took their places, according to Bail Bonds Unlimited records.

In a 2005 interview, Mortillaro denied receiving an invitation or ticket to the fishing tournament or the circus performance. Neither he nor Hand was charged with a crime.

It was the first of two such Wrinkled Robe surveillance efforts at Beau Rivage, the other coming in April 2001, according to the records.


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The Times-PicayuneAn interactive history of Operation Wrinkled Robe.

By the fall of 1999, agents had grown interested in Porteous, a former state district judge. A newspaper clipping in the FBI file recounts Porteous' controversial court ruling in the struggle for control of a Kenner hospital, which later figured into Porteous' impeachment. Mathews asked the Justice Department's public integrity division for a background investigation of a federal district judge, and soon the FBI sent two agents to Las Vegas to investigate a "bachelor party weekend," according to the records. Two of Porteous' lawyer friends had helped pay for his son's wedding and for Porteous' hotel room in Vegas.

In 2000, the FBI began to implement an undercover operation. The bureau transferred its resident agent in Brownsville to New Orleans to assume a fake identity and infiltrate Bail Bonds Unlimited's operation. After seven months, the agent returned to Texas, "successful in acquiring detailed information concerning subjects of the investigation."

That information later went into a crucial affidavit that the FBI used to secure warrants from McNamara for wiretapping phones and secreting video cameras in the chambers of Bodenheimer and Green. Five days after losing a court challenge to use of the electronic surveillance, Bodenheimer plead guilty to three corruption charges. The recordings also played a important role in convicting Green at trial of mail fraud in 2005.