Thursday, July 01, 1999
Ex-Chiquita lawyer's plea deal results in probation
He supplied voice-mail access codes
BY DAN HORN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
With a simple e-mail message, prosecutors say, George Ventura told two Cincinnati Enquirer reporters he had “stories I could tell” about Chiquita Brands International Inc. Prosecutors say that first contact eventually led to a bruising, yearlong legal battle.
Part of the battle ended Wednesday when Mr. Ventura pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of attempting to steal voice-mail messages from Chiquita.
The 38-year-old lawyer from Salt Lake City was sentenced to two years' probation and 40 hours of community service.
“A lot of people want to get this behind them,” special prosecutor Daniel Breyer said after the hearing in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. “We're satisfied with the deal.”
Although the plea will keep Mr. Ventura out of jail, his attorney Marc Mezibov said the case has taken a huge financial, professional and personal toll on his client.
“Mr. Ventura's life has been turned completely upside down,” he said in a statement.
Mr. Breyer said the plea came one day after Chiquita and Mr. Ventura, a former employee, settled all civil claims the company may have against him.
He said the next step for prosecutors is to forward details about the case to the Utah Bar Association for possible disciplinary action against Mr. Ventura.
Otherwise, Mr. Breyer said, the investigation is complete.
Following the plea, Mr. Breyer detailed how investigators linked Mr. Ventura and former Enquirer reporter Michael Gallagher to the theft of voice-mail messages.
He said a trail of e-mails, taped phone conversations and calls traced to pay phones helped prosecutors unravel the case.
The key, Mr. Breyer said, is an October 1997 call to the Enquirer in which Mr. Ventura provided voice-mail codes and urged reporters to access the system.
He said Mr. Gallagher accessed Chiquita's system as many as 2,000 times during the next year, sometimes 15 times a day.
With the aid of a caller identification system, investigators traced calls into the voice-mails from pay phones, Mr. Breyer said.
He said the pay phones were near Mr. Gallagher's former home in Milford, at locations along the route he drove to work each day and at the airport on days he was traveling.
Some of the calls, he said, were made from a pay phone in the lobby of the Enquirer building on Elm Street.
“He made a whole bunch of calls,” Mr. Breyer said. “He was making a tape a day.”
Mr. Gallagher was fired by the newspaper and has pleaded guilty to two felony charges of illegally accessing the voice-mail system.
Although Mr. Gallagher faces up to 21/2 years in prison when he is sentenced July 16, the judge in his case has said there will be a “presumption of probation” because he has no record.
The other reporter, Cameron McWhirter, was not charged with a crime and has testified that he did not access the voice-mail system.
Several voice-mail messages were quoted in articles the reporters wrote last year about Chiquita's business practices.
The newspaper later renounced the articles, apologized to Chiquita and paid the company more than $10 million.
A Chiquita spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Ventura's plea Wednesday but confirmed the company had reached a confidential agreement with him regarding potential civil litigation.
“Chiquita has settled its civil claims against Mr. Ventura on a satisfactory basis,” according to a company statement.
Mr. Breyer said that agreement helped to clear the way for the plea in the criminal case because the victims — Chiquita officials — told him they wanted to resolve the matter.
He said the deal was attractive to Chiquita because it means there will be no trial and it carries a promise from Mr. Ventura not to appeal.
“Chiquita doesn't want to have this thing festering in the press for the next four or five years,” he said.
Mr. Ventura would not comment, but a statement from him accused the Enquirer and its parent company, Gannett, of breaking a promise to protect Mr. Ventura's identity.
“The results of their betrayal of Mr. Ventura are obvious,” the statement said. “He has been the subject of criminal prosecution, he has lost his job, exhausted his financial resources and faces an uncertain professional and financial future.”
Asked whether the statement means he intends to sue the newspaper, Mr. Mezibov said: “That's a fair inference to draw.”
Enquirer Publisher Harry Whipple said “neither the Enquirer nor Gannett has revealed any confidential sources.”
Mr. Gallagher, who was fired several weeks after the articles were published in May 1998, testified in April that Mr. Ventura was one of his sources. Mr. McWhirter, who now works for the Detroit News, did not name any of his sources.
On Wednesday, Judge Ann Marie Tracey scolded Mr. Ventura after accepting his plea to four misdemeanor counts of attempted unauthorized access to computer systems.
“I'm appalled at the betrayal of trust you displayed toward your client and to the legal profession,” Judge Tracey said. “Your fellow lawyers do not appreciate your conduct here.”
After the hearing, Mr. Breyer said Mr. Ventura was able to provide the voice-mail codes because he worked at the company for five years and knew several of the executives whose codes he revealed.
“Ventura and these guys were friends,” Mr. Breyer said. “They didn't suspect him.”
Months after giving the reporters the codes, he said, Mr. Ventura called one of the executives and acted as if he had just been contacted by Mr. Gallagher.
“He leaves a message saying, "Hey, I just got a call from a guy named Mike Gallagher,'” Mr. Breyer said.
He said Mr. Ventura first contacted the reporters after calling up the newspaper's Web site and reading an old article about Chiquita. After learning the reporters were researching a story, Mr. Breyer said, Mr. Ventura sent an e-mail offering his help.
In a later phone call, he said, Mr. Ventura provided the access codes.
He said Chiquita executives began to suspect someone was providing the newspaper with inside information when the reporters began asking specific questions that suggested a knowledge of internal conversations.
Mr. Breyer said they realized the leak was linked to the voice-mails when one of the executives attempted to access his voice-mail and got a busy signal.
“When they checked the system,” Mr. Breyer said, “they found out it was being invaded.”
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