A judge upheld the 15-year prison sentence for former Hollywood private investigator Anthony Pellicano on Monday.
According to the Los Angeles Times, U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer ruled that the sentence was “reasonable and sufficient” despite a technical error in the 2008 trial which resulted in two of Pellicano’s charges being vacated by an appeals court in 2015.
Pellicano, who was charged with illegal wiretapping and running a criminal enterprise, is expected to be released in March 2019 and faces three years of supervision following his release.
In Dec. 2008, a federal judge sentenced Pellicano to 15 years in prison and ordered him and two other defendants to forfeit a total of $2 million.
The disgraced private detective — once among Hollywood’s favorites — was convicted of 78 crimes, including wiretapping, racketeering and wire fraud.
He had been accused of bribing police to run the names of celebrities including Garry Shandling and Kevin Nealon through law enforcement databases, and of tapping others’ telephones and recording the conversations of his clients’ business and litigation opponents.
The FBI investigation into Pellicano’s activities began in 2002 when then-L.A. Times journalist Anita Busch reported finding a dead fish with a rose in its mouth and a note reading, “Stop” on her car’s windshield after she wrote articles about one of Pellicano’s clients, industry power player Michael Ovitz.