Jury acquits Gene Phillips, Cal Rossi
Dallas Business Journal - February 13, 2002
Print this Article Email this Article Reprints RSS Feeds Most Viewed Most Emailed
A federal jury in New York City on Wednesday acquitted Dallas real estate developer Gene Phillips and his former associate, Anthony "Cal" Rossi, on all counts, including federal racketeering and wire fraud charges.
After a three-month trial, the jury returned not-guilty verdicts for Phillips and Rossi on all seven charges. Charges included racketeering, wire fraud, union pension fund fraud and payment of illegal kickbacks, according to court documents.
Phillips and Rossi were tried in the case along with four other defendants, two of whom were found guilty.
The charges in the case were part of a broader June 2000 indictment of 120 people, including reputed members of New York's organized crime families, for allegedly using stock manipulation, fraud and violence to reap more than $50 million in illegal profits.
Prosecutors at the time said Phillips and Rossi played key roles in a scheme to pay off corrupt union officials and mobsters.
The two men were charged with agreeing to funnel investments in pension funds into a preferred-stock issue of a publicly traded real estate investment trust, American Realty Trust, which the indictment claimed was controlled by Basic Capital Management Inc., a Dallas-based investment advisory company.
Both American Realty and Basic Capital have denied any wrongdoing.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Basic Capital described Phillips as a real estate investor whose children's trust owns BCM. The company said Rossi was a BCM executive and managed its capital markets department.
Phillips' attorney, Abbe Lowell, said they were pleased the matter had been resolved.
"We promised over a year-and-a-half ago that we would prove that Gene Phillips was an innocent man," Lowell said in a statement, "and that is exactly what the jury found today." |
