FBI late on Fumo e-mails

When FBI agent Vicki Humphreys arrived at former state Sen. Vince Fumo's Tasker Street office to serve a search warrant on Feb. 18, 2005, she said that she discovered that a sophisticated "wipe" was in progress on the computer of aide Leonard P. Luchko, who had already left the office.

Agents immediately powered the computer down, Humphreys said.

A computer technician for Fumo, Luchko was later arrested, in May 2006, at his home on conspiracy and obstruction charges. (He pleaded guilty in August 2008, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.)

Prosecutors say that much of the electronic evidence in the case was wiped - or destroyed using sophisticated software that erases all traces of e-mails and other documents - before Humphreys arrived.

Fumo was indicted in February 2007 on 139 counts of conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice and related tax offenses. (Luchko and two other aides also were charged in the case.)

Humphreys, expected to complete testimony next week, was the 77th and final witness that prosecutors planned to call at Fumo's three-month trial.

Humphreys said that the focus of the probe, which began in February 2003, concerned spending by a nonprofit that Fumo founded, Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, and whether Fumo had extorted money from Peco Energy and Verizon.

Peco gave $17 million to Citizens Alliance to settle a legal dispute with Fumo over the energy company's deregulation in 1998.

A former president of Verizon's Pennsylvania operations testified earlier this month that Fumo had sought $50 million in contributions from the phone giant to settle a regulatory dispute. (Verizon refused most of Fumo's demands.)

But prosecutors never charged Fumo with extortion.

"How successful were you in retrieving e-mail related to the Peco and Verizon matters you were investigating?" asked prosecutor John Pease.

"I wasn't," Humphreys replied, adding that she had found "none at all. There was nothing."

Humphreys also testified that the feds found 83,000 e-mails from computers and BlackBerries in Fumo's Senate offices and Citizens Alliance, but only 125 related to the nonprofit.

Earlier yesterday, jurors were read an e-mail exchange, between Luchko and Deborah Maguire, who supervised computer technicians for Senate Democrats in Harrisburg.

In the Aug. 24, 2003, e-mail, part of which the defense fought to keep out, Luchko vents, telling Maguire that he's saddened that computer aides in Harrisburg think he and a fellow aide in Philadelphia get special treatment.

"I would like to see their reaction when they are told to drive people to get their hair done," Luchko wrote. "I would like to see their reaction if they have to wrap 150 VJF bobblehead dolls and mail them." "VJF" stands for Vincent J. Fumo.

The feds say that Fumo, among other things, defrauded the state Senate of more than $2 million by having staffers do personal work for him on Senate time.

The e-mail was one of many - recovered from Luchko's computers - admitted yesterday through the testimony of FBI computer forensics expert Justin Price.

For example, Maguire, a Fumo loyalist, fired off an e-mail to Luchko on June 8, 2004, complaining that Harrisburg staff were not deleting e-mails to and from Fumo.

Luchko replied that Fumo "REALLY wants that mail gone," adding, "Put it to them this way if Fumo goes [down] we all go down . . . . "

Luchko had been expected to testify against Fumo earlier this week. Prosecutors chose not to call him after learning from his attorney that Luchko had been in e-mail contact with Fumo, government witnesses and former Fumo staff during the trial. *