FBI Agent Testifies About Payoff to Moore

Former Compton Councilwoman Patricia Moore extorted $9,100 from an undercover FBI agent, including $3,000 that she claimed was destined for Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally, according to testimony in her federal court trial Wednesday.

During a secretly videotaped meeting with FBI Agent Robert Kilbane in November 1991, Moore promised to line up political support on the Compton City Council and school board for a proposed waste-to-energy conversion plant.

“All I’m asking you to do for me is to help me a little bit financially. That’s all I’m asking you to do,” she told Kilbane, who was posing as a representative of Asian financial interests behind the project.

Besides the money she wanted for herself, Moore said, “Give me three for Dymally at least. Give me three ‘cause it’s three different people I’m gonna need him to deliver.”

Reached for comment afterward, Dymally called his former political protege a liar.

“I’m just annoyed that she would use my good name to further her criminal interests,” said Dymally, who retired from Congress in 1993.

If there had been any truth to her claim, he said, the FBI would have acted on it during its four-year probe of official corruption in Compton.

“This FBI sting was set up to get me and you can rest assured that if there was anything to what she said, they would have been at my doorstep.” Dymally said he felt especially betrayed because he befriended her after her indictment, trying to secure free legal help.

In the videotape played for the jury Wednesday, Moore can be seen asking repeatedly for money for herself and for Compton Mayor Walter R. Tucker III and then-Councilman Omar Bradley.

“I’m asking you to give Omar and Tucker about five thousand each,” she said, describing the payments as “incentives” with more to follow.

Tucker was convicted of extortion in the same federal courtroom last year and is serving a 27-month term at the Lompoc prison. Although Bradley’s name has surfaced many times in the trial, there has been no evidence that he accepted bribes.

The videotape shows Moore receiving only $1,000 from Kilbane. Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Atty. Mary Carter Andrues, Kilbane said that the hidden video camera malfunctioned during their meeting and failed to record the other payments.

In addition to the $1,000, he said he gave Moore another $5,000 for herself and $3,000 purportedly for Dymally. He also said that he miscounted when peeling off $100 bills during the alleged payoff and somehow gave Moore an extra $100, raising to $9,100 the total she received that day.

All told, Moore is accused of extorting $50,100 from the project, which operated under the name of Compton Energy Systems. She also is accused of extorting $12,000 from Compton Entertainment Inc., which was seeking City Council approval to open a card casino in Compton.

After Wednesday’s proceedings, Moore had an unplanned encounter with Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, who showed up in the same courtroom of U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall. Fleiss was there for a status conference in advance of her sentencing next Monday for tax evasion.

The two women, who had not met before, embraced and exchanged words of support. They wished each other good luck.

“I hope you’re luckier than I was,” Fleiss said.