Vignali Case Built on Informants, Wiretaps

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.”