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TMCNet: Ex-girlfriend tells court of high life with Fumo

[November 18, 2008]

Ex-girlfriend tells court of high life with Fumo

Nov 18, 2008 (Philadelphia Daily News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
A former girlfriend of state Sen. Vincent Fumo testified yesterday about a five-year relationship that exposed her to luxury yachts, private jets, expensive restaurants and island vacations.

Who paid for what wasn't clear yesterday as the witness, Dorothy Egrie-Wilcox, completed a day of direct testimony, without cross-examination by attorneys for Fumo and his longtime associate, Ruth Arnao.

But Egrie-Wilcox described various ways in which Fumo used his state Senate staff to enhance his lifestyle.

Staff members did housekeeping at Fumo's homes in Fairmount and at the Jersey Shore, she testified, and aides drove several luggage-laden automobiles to Massachusetts every summer so that Fumo and his vacation guests could fly to Martha's Vineyard by private jet.

After two weeks entertaining family and guests at a rented home on the Vineyard, Egrie-Wilcox said, the vacations typically ended with cruises to Nantucket or Block Island on elegant yachts provided by the Independence Seaport Museum, based at Penn's Landing.

She indicated that she wasn't sure of the financial arrangements for the cruises, but added: "Vince didn't pay for it. He would have told everyone. He usually tells everybody when he pays for something."

Fumo was the first person to introduce her to the phrase "OPM" -- meaning "other people's money," Egrie-Wilcox testified.

She said she remembered several occasions when the bill would arrive for dinner with Fumo, Arnao and her husband, Mitchell Rubin, chairman of the state Turnpike Commission, and Fumo would say, "Let's use OPM tonight."

Egrie-Wilcox testified that she began dating Fumo in 1999, as the powerful state senator was "in the process of getting separated" from his second wife. With occasional break-ups, she said, she continued seeing Fumo until sometime in 2004.

Much of her testimony was based on e-mail exchanges from the period when she was dating the senator. She used a laptop computer paid for by taxpayers and maintained by Fumo's Senate staff, who "were always on call, 24/7," she testified, even when the job was attending to her computer problems.

There were many such problems, and part of the reason was reflected in a September 2002 e-mail between two of Fumo's computer aides, entered into evidence yesterday.

"The Boss wants us to fix Dottie's laptop so it will 'break' every month or so and she will have to bring it in to us for service," Leonard Luchko told a colleague, Don Wilson.

Frank D. Wallace, a private detective who had a consulting contract with Fumo's Senate committee, testified two weeks ago that Fumo had asked him to conduct surveillance of Egrie in fall 2002, after a falling-out.

She testified yesterday she was never aware of any surveillance. But she said a male friend's driver's license was suspended unexpectedly, after Fumo had sent an e-mail to Wallace asking him to look into the man's license situation and "nail this m--- f----."

In another e-mail that Fumo sent to Egrie in June 1999, he lamented his financial situation.
"I make a very good living, but it is not a secure one and I have been spending like crazy," Fumo said.

Fumo is accused of fraud, tax evasion and obstruction of justice, for allegedly improperly using his Senate staff members and reaping personal benefits from a nonprofit organization he created, the Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods. Arnao served as executive director of the nonprofit after years as Fumo's deputy chief of staff.

To see more of the Philadelphia Daily News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go
to http://www.philly.com. Copyright (c) 2008, Philadelphia Daily News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax
to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave.,
Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

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