Marvin Rudnick

Marvin Rudnick was a prosecutor with the Justice Department's Organized Crime Strike Force in Los Angeles who twice convicted Salvatore Pisello, a middleman in business dealings with MCA Records, of tax evasion; the second conviction was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit in 1989.²³ He had earlier made his name as a prosecutor in Florida.²

The Strike Force

Rudnick sought to extend the Pisello investigation into MCA Records. Michael DeFeo, deputy chief of the strike force in Washington, took him off the investigation of the record promoter Joe Isgro, and David Margolis, its chief, told him he was becoming "too high-profile" in the Pisello case. In July 1988 Rudnick was told that John Newcomer, head of the Los Angeles strike force, was putting negative reports in his personnel file, and the department opened formal proceedings against him. In mid-August Newcomer immunized Pisello and put him before the grand jury without telling Rudnick, who learned of it from reporters.²

On July 6, 1989, Rudnick received a two-sentence letter from Edward Dennis, the acting deputy attorney general: "This is to inform you that pursuant to the authority set forth in 28 C.F.R. 0.15 you are hereby removed from your position as trial attorney (general), organized crime and racketeering section, criminal division." He had been in public service for thirteen years. The department described the removal as a "personnel matter" arising from his relationship with Newcomer. His colleague Richard Stavin, who had taken over the payola case, had resigned that May, saying, "I was convinced I was about to become the next Marvin Rudnick." Rudnick went into private practice in Pasadena.²

Cheri Seymour wrote that Rudnick, Stavin and the FBI agent Thomas Gates believed on the basis of wiretaps that MCA had been penetrated by organized crime, that the wiretaps were sealed, and that the Los Angeles strike force was disbanded.¹ The account of the case by William Knoedelseder of the Los Angeles Times, Stiffed, was published in 1993.²