Witness Testifies He Paid Pisello Cash in ‘Cutout’ Record Deals

A witness in the tax evasion trial of reputed mobster Salvatore Pisello testified Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that he made a series of unusual cash payments to Pisello in 1984 and 1985 as down payments on the purchase of about 1.5 million so-called cutout recordings from MCA Records.

Ranji Bedi, owner of a now-defunct budget record distributorship called Betaco Enterprises, said he gave Pisello a total of $46,000 in three separate transactions--all in the form of “fresh, new $100 bills”--while sitting in Pisello’s Cadillac Eldorado convertible in the parking lot of a bank in Santa Monica.

Bedi testified that the cash payments were requested by Pisello, who was “recommended to me by MCA as their representative.” Pisello is charged with evading taxes on about $450,000 in unreported income for the years 1983 to 1985. Most of the unreported income came from record business deals that Pisello negotiated during those years, apparently as an agent of MCA Records.

Tied to Crime Family

Pisello has been identified by authorities as a member of New York’s Gambino crime family. MCA executives have said that they had no knowledge of Pisello’s alleged ties to organized crime and that Pisello was not an employee of the company.

During a full day of questioning by prosecutor Marvin L. Rudnick, a special attorney for the Los Angeles office of the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force, Bedi discussed the details of two separate 1984 cutout purchases from MCA in which Pisello acted as a middleman, directing the amount and manner of payment for the recordings. Cutouts are records that have been deleted from a record company’s sales catalogue because they are no longer in demand.

Bedi said that he was first contacted by Pisello in March, 1984, after Bedi called MCA to inquire about purchasing cutouts. After several meetings with Pisello in a Westwood coffee shop, Bedi agreed to purchase about 550,000 MCA cutouts for 65 cents apiece, he said. Pisello then requested a down payment of $115,000, of which $100,000 was to be in the form of a cashier’s check made out to MCA and $15,000 in cash to Pisello, according to Bedi.

Wanted Cash Advance

Bedi said he delivered the cashier’s check to Pisello in the lobby of MCA Records in Universal City and gave him the cash several days later in the Santa Monica bank parking lot.

Bedi said he agreed to purchase another 1 million records at 60 cents apiece in October, 1984. This time, he said, Pisello requested a $200,000 down payment for MCA and a $50,000 cash advance for himself.

“He wanted a purchase order made out for 50 cents a unit, and he wanted 10 cents a record on top of that,” which was not to be mentioned in the document, Bedi said. “(Pisello) said it was none of MCA’s business what he made. They allowed him to make whatever he could on the deal.”

Pisello asked that his $50,000 advance against commission be broken down into a cash payment of $15,000 and a $35,000 wire transfer of funds to the Las Vegas bank account of a company called General Enterprises, which Pisello said he owned, according to Bedi’s testimony.

The second cutout purchase was never completed, Bedi said, because MCA shipped only about 130,000 of the 1 million cutouts that were ordered. Nonetheless, Bedi testified, he was persuaded by Pisello to advance him another $51,000, of which $16,000 was to be in cash--”to buy Christmas presents.”

Paid $400,000

The remaining $35,000 was in the form of a cashier’s check--”to do what I have to do with my people at MCA to get the rest of your product,” Bedi quoted Pisello as saying.

Bedi testified that during 1984 and 1985 he paid Pisello and his company, Consultants for World Records, more than $400,000 in a combination of cash, cashier’s checks and wire transfers to bank accounts in Queens, N.Y., and Las Vegas.

He said he was concerned initially about the unconventional method of payments but was assured by Sam Passamano, a former top MCA executive, that “Sal is our representative and whatever he says to do is OK.”

“I thought I was dealing with MCA,” Bedi testified.

Bedi said that over the two-year period he called Pisello “many times” at MCA Records’ offices and met with him there on several occasions.

Claimed Friendships

According to Bedi, Pisello claimed friendships with MCA Music Entertainment Group President Irving Azoff, MCA Records President Myron Roth and MCA Vice President of Legal Affairs Zach Horowitz.

“He told me many times that he was very close with these people,” Bedi said. “He could walk through those (MCA Records) office doors as if he were part of that company, as if he was a top employee. He showed authority.”