Despite mutterings from others there, he turned up with about 30 other Fumo aides, past and present, for a dinner Nov. 25 at Scannicchio's restaurant, at Broad and Porter Streets in South Philadelphia, marking Fumo's final week in the Senate.

And even after his guilty plea to charges of taking part in a Fumo cover-up, the 52-year-old computer technician, perhaps bored and angry, kept exchanging e-mails with the state senator - and sending other e-mails to news blogs and Web sites.

In his public posts, Luchko bitterly complained about the unfairness of the government's pursuit of Fumo.

Only last month, he wrote in one message, posted under a screen name Justice4All, that prosecutors "wanted Fumo at ANY cost and this is a classic example of throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks."

For a man still awaiting sentencing, Luchko's Internet logorrhea seems extraordinarily foolish.

After prosecutors learned of his e-mail exchanges with Fumo and others, they yesterday yanked Luchko off their witness list. It seems likely now that Luchko will get no points for cooperation and may have bought himself a harsher punishment.

The e-mails seem one more miscalculation for a man with shaky judgment at best.

While he was busy deleting Fumo e-mails and wiping hard drives, Luchko paused in 2005 to shoot off a message to a coworker boasting that the FBI would never figure out what he was up to.

"Good Luck to them because they are going to need it," he wrote. "They aren't getting s- off that PC."

That e-mail was later introduced into evidence against Luchko and Fumo.

As it happened, Luchko's mistake was that even as he zealously wiped other's computers, he failed to cleanse his own.

Hired by Fumo as a computer technician about a decade ago and assigned at his last posting at Fumo's South Philadelphia legislative office, Luchko was making $62,000 when he quit the Senate the day after his arrest.

He was arrested at 5:30 a.m. on May 31, 2006 - eight months before Fumo was indicted. His lawyer said the raid at the Collingdale home Luchko shared with his 84-year-old mother was designed to pressure him.

"I made it clear to the government for 18 months, that with a phone call, I would bring him in," the lawyer, James C. Schwartzman, said. "Instead, they made a show for the public and perhaps for the fear factor."

Luchko held firm for a time, but finally agreed late last year to turn against the man whom, in e-mails, he called the Boss.

Yet he wavered. The state job had been such a big part of his life. Perhaps a 2003 e-mail, quoted at length in the indictment, shows his mixed feelings.

In it, Luchko bemoaned that other Fumo aides were unaware of his heavy workload, unaware that he had to wrap up Fumo "bobble-head" dolls and mail them, drive people to get their hair done - and even take out the trash.

"I would like to see their reaction when they are told to support the Senator, his family, girlfriends, and business associates along with the staff their friends and their kids 24 hours a day," Luchko wrote.

His signoff: "P.S. I love my job and wouldn't trade it for any job in the Senate!"