Mayor Convicted On First Day

Interim San Diego Mayor Found Guilty Of Taking Strip Club Payoffs

(AP) 
The R-rated trial began in May and featured hours of wiretapped conversations, lunches and locker room meetings and a 310-pound bodybuilder turned FBI informant.

The prosecution's key witness was Galardi, the owner of Cheetahs strip club in San Diego and three other nude bars in Las Vegas. Galardi testified that he hatched the plan to bribe Zucchet and Inzunza because San Diego's "no-touch" law was hurting business at Cheetahs.

Galardi pleaded guilty to conspiracy and is awaiting sentencing. He also has pleaded guilty in a parallel corruption probe in Las Vegas, which is scheduled for trial in January.

Prosecutors said the evidence of the plot could be found on secretly recorded conversations dating to 2001. In one 2003 conversation, Malone told a Las Vegas strip club employee before he posed as a concerned San Diego citizen at a council committee that the less he knew about the plot the better.

"It's called plausible deniability, baby," Malone said.

After a 2½-year investigation, FBI agents swarmed City Hall in May 2003, a few weeks after that conversation, searching the offices of Inzunza, Zucchet and Councilman Charles Lewis, who was indicted but died last year of liver disease.

During the trial, defense attorneys sought to portray Zucchet and Inzunza's dealings with Malone as part of the legislative process and suggested that their clients — both Democrats — were being targeted by a Republican U.S. Attorney for political reasons.

"Does anybody think we'd be here if this case involved real estate development?" Michael Pancer, Inzunza's attorney said during closing arguments that stretched over four days.