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The following testimony was given by Joseph Lauricella, regarding a suit against someone accused of stealing computer files. Mr. Lauricella testifies that he was paid by WMX, the giant waste handling firm, and a WMX subsidiary - called Rail-Cycle - to create a fake environmental organization, buy the stolen computer files, and attempt to discredit a company opposed to a huge WMX landfill project in Cadiz, California. The proposed operation would handle the garbage of Los Angeles and would become the world's largest dump. Cadiz Land Company says it would jeopardize a precious ground water resource.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

No. CIV 97-1286

CADIZ LAND COMPANY, INC., et al.,

Plaintiff

vs.

CYNTHIA EISENBERGER, individual,

Defendant.

SWORN STATEMENT OF

JOSEPH ERNEST LAURICELLA

VOLUME I

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

AUGUST 1, 1997

ATKINSON-BAKER, INC.

CERTIFIED SHORTHAND REPORTERS

Suite 1000

300 Montgomery Street

San Francisco, California 94104

REPORTED BY: JANET T. OREB, CSR NO. 5198

FILE NO.: 9713729

Sworn Statement of JOSEPH ERNEST LAURICELLA, Volume I, taken on behalf

of Plaintiff, at Valley Medical Center, 751 S. Bascom Avenue, San Jose,

California, commencing at 12:17 p.m., Friday, August 1, 1997, before

Janet T. Oreb, CSR No. 5198.

A P P E A R A N C E S:

FOR THE PLAINTIFF:

MILLER & HOLGUIN

BY: DEBORAH A. KLAR, ESQ.

1801 Century Park East

7th Floor

Los Angeles, CA 90067-3122

(310) 556-1990

JOSEPH ERNEST LAURICELLA,

having first been duly sworn, was

examined and testified as follows:

EXAMINATION

BY MS. KLAR:

Q. Mr. Lauricella, you are here today to give a sworn statement;

correct?

A. That's correct.

Q. And you are doing this on a voluntary basis?

A. That's correct.

Q. Mr. Lauricella, have you every been known by any other name?

A. Several times through my lifetime I've been known by a lot of names.

One of them is Tony T-o-n-y, last Bergschneider,

B-e-r-g-s-c-h-n-e-i-d-e-r.

Q. And is it correct, Mr. Lauricella, in May of 1995 you were hired as a

consultant by Rail-Cycle under the alias of Tony Bergschneider?

A. That's correct.

Q. And let me show you a document that I'd like the reporter to mark as

Lauricella Exhibit A, which appears to be a copy of an agreement between

Tony Bergschneider and Rail-Cycle dated May 18, 1995.

(Exhibit(s) indexed: Exhibit A)

Q. Have you seen this document before -- prior to today?

A. This is a copy of my consulting agreement with Rail-Cycle dated May

18, 1995. It has my signature on it and was accepted by myself and also

Stu Clark as board director of Rail-Cycle. And it's dated in my

handwriting on 5-18-95, or my handwriting as Tony Bergschneider.

Q. And did your responsibilities for Rail-Cycle exceed the

responsibilities described in Exhibit A?

A. Yes.

Q. And is it correct that in connection with your arrangement with

Rail-Cycle you worked closely with Stu Clark?

A. Stu Clark through Glen Odell. I mean I worked with Stu Clark, with

Stu Clark and Glen Odell. My direct supervisor would have been Glen

Odell who then reported directly to Stu Clark. I worked because it's

such a close organization anyway, I worked with those two, but the chain

of command would have been myself, Glen Odell and then Stu Clark.

Q. Now, can you generally describe what you were hired by Rail-Cycle to

do?

A. Well, generally it boils down to one thing which was to get the

landfill project out in Cadiz, California, in by all means. In other

words, whatever it took to get that project passed by the board of

supervisors, to get it passed by the planning commission, to get it

okayed by the locals and, you know, to get them feeling food about the

project. All warm and fuzzy about it, to get the people in 29 Palms, in

the area surrounding it feeling good about it. Our main hindrance was

Cadiz Land Company to make sure they didn't form a stumbling block into

getting the project in.

Q. So part of what you were engaged to do was to destroy the interests

of Cadiz in the project?

A. Yeah. The idea was -- I think as Glen put it, the idea was if Cadiz

stood in our way, which, of course, it was doing at the time, Cadiz Land

Company, to make sure that the Cadiz Land Company went down the tubes,

Submarine it, that was the idea.

Q. Now, back in May of 1995 there was an organization meeting as I

understand it of a group called FACE, F-A-C-E.

A. Uh-huh.

Q. How did that meeting come about?

A. Okay. We have a little problem with dates because unless I have the

actual hard copies, I'm real bad with dates to give you an exact date,

which is what happened. I can tell you how we did the -- how the FACE

environmental group was formed.

Q. That's fine.

A. I can't tell you the exact date of it because -- the way it was

formed is that Glen Odell, geez, who else was it, Stu Clark, there was

one other person involved which I had in my files, decided that we

needed a group out there, in the Cadiz area that could kind of like

beard for Rail-Cycle when it came to the meetings and everything, but it

was decided that with the group out there none of the people could write

the speeches that needed to go in front of the board of supervisors, it

couldn't come from the company, it had to come from them, so we got

together and formed this company, I mean this group, FACE Environmental

-- actually FACE Environmental Coalition, and named them, the people,

the locals in Cadiz and Amboy as the head of something in name only and

we used it to push Rail-Cycle's own agenda.

Q. Did you have conversations with anyone from Rail-Cycle regarding why

you needed a beard for the organization?

A. Oh, because the reason we needed, it would look really good in the

newspaper to have a group out there that was supposedly environmentally

sensitive to the issues surrounding the Cadiz area and the Amboy area and to

face it and go up in front of the board of supervisors, look like the locals

who wanted the landfill project in as opposed to having the company come

forward and say, hey, team, we want this, we want this landfill. What you got

now is this group of people, the only people that live out there, saying since

they're the only people living out there and it's their property and their

area, they want the landfill. It's

kind of hard to argue with, if you think about it. It was a pretty good

idea for Rail-Cycle to come up with it.

Q. And who at Rail-Cycle came up with that idea?

A. That was done by Stu Clark, Glen Odell, it was also done by their

attorneys, they were involved with it, and I can't give you the exact

names. I know that when the FACE Environmental Coalition or a group like

FACE Environmental. The name wasn't important. We could have called it

anything. But it was decided by a group of people at the home office in

Irvine. All the people that were involved, along with their advertising

people, I mean everybody that was involved. In fact, it even went as far

as getting involved with the people in the County, the different county

people. In the Planning Department. They all kind of had like little

inputs into it and that's how that came about. Because it was easier --

it was easier for the company to write -- to write what the community

wanted and have it come from the community than it was to have it come from

the company. The community wanted this. In reality the company -- I mean the

company wrote everything that FACE ever did.

Q. The company you mean --

A. Meaning Rail-Cycle.

Q. -- is Rail-Cycle?

A. Actually -- Rail-Cycle, actually, Waste Management.

Q. Now, how do you know that -- how do you know who was involved in this

idea, did somebody tell you or did you attend meetings?

A. No. I attended meetings. I was personally there when conversations

were decided on how the group was going to be formed, who was going to be the

chairman, who was going to be the assistant chairman. I was there

when we sent down -- when the company sent down computers for the FACE

Environmental Coalition to use. I was there when we sent down fax

machines that I picked up from the office and delivered down there.

Everything from the office that we used, which at that point in time was being

rented by Waste Management of Rail-Cycle, was -- you know, it was used. Every

bit of money that the group spent for traveling expenses was - was, you know,

came from Waste Management. Or Rail-Cycle.

Q. Now, did you ever attend a meeting at which anyone from the county

was present where the idea about this group was discussed?

A. Well, I think that what ended up happening, I think -- not I think. I

know what happened. The group was actually formed -- it wasn't really

formed all that formally by the company. Everybody had their input of

what they wanted. We didn't sit down -- I know we didn't sit down and

say, okay, today we're going to do this this way and A is going to B and

B is going to C. It was kind of developed over a period of a couple of

weeks, and I did attend meetings that dealt with the group kind of

getting larger or more defined. In other words, the group had been named

and then I did -- I went to meetings that were involved with the board

of supervisor members that would define the group and how the group

should react to certain things, so the group kind of evolved. It started

out as small and then it was defined.

Q. And who from the board of supervisors was present at those meetings?

A. Well, let's see, I was there one time when Turoci was there. And that

was after -- actually after meetings -- one of the meetings where the

public was invited and that kind of thing where the group FACE spoke

out. And it was kind of a chuckle between Glen and I, and Stu really

wasn't involved -- well, he was involved, but it that meeting he was off

doing his own things and it was kind of a chuckle of how intelligent it

was or how smart it was that Glen and I and Turoci were laughing about

it had gotten this group together to -- to face off against Cadiz Land

Company because it got -- it was a big joke about how the media fell in

love with the group. We were the media darlings there for about four or

five months, in fact, even longer than that.

Q. Was anyone other than -- any other member of the board of supervisors

there other than Turoci?

A. Turoci was the only one. You know, a lot of people were kind of

around after those meetings would happen there, and I can't give you

exact -- somebody said exactly this or exactly that. I can tell you what

the general conversation was.

Ms. Klar: You want to eat? Let's -- Mr. Lauricella's lunch has arrived.

He's going to eat for a moment and we'll go off the record and we'll

come back on.

(Recess.)

Ms. Klar: Let me have the reporter mark as Lauricella Exhibit Number 2 a

transcript of a hearing held at San Bernardino County Government Center

May 16, 1995.

(Exhibit[s] indexed: Exhibit B.)

Q. By Ms Klar: Mr. Lauricella, did you attend the hearing that is the

subject of Exhibit B on May 16, 1995?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. And can you tell me why you attended that hearing?

A. I attended this meeting as a speaker on behalf of the FACE

Environmental Coalition and I gave a speech that was written for me,

actually, written by Waste Management and by Glen Odell and the people up at

Rail-Cycle. And I read the speech as though it were written by myself when I

didn't write it. And also there were other people inside that I know because I

handed them the speeches that read the speeches like they were literally their

speeches, but they were written by Waste Management, i.e., Rail-Cycle, to be

put into the record of the San Bernardino Board of Supervisors meeting on May

16, 1995.

Q. Was the purpose of that meeting to oppose the water project or was it

to support the landfill project?

A. Actually, I think what this meeting was to -- this was to shoot down

Cadiz Land Company, basically, and to shoot down the water project and to tell

the people at San Bernardino County that a new group had been formed out

there, i.e., FACE Environmental Coalition, which didn't effect -- keep the

people who were out in that area as a group and to -- and as one party, a

united front against Cadiz Land Company, but in reality this whole thing was

written for and done up by Waste

Management. I know because I handed the speeches to the people and we went

over them in the bus on the way down, the bus that Waste Management paid for.

And I went through the speeches with these people. And I know when I talk in

here, if you read this thing, it looks like I've been in town for years,

talking about -- you know, talking about how I'd been in town. I think I had

been there for not even two weeks or so. But the

speech made it sound like I had been there for years and years. And so

it was written in the record as though -- those people put it together.

I don't know if half the people understood what they were reading when

they were reading it. They just read the words.

Q. Was one of the people present at that meeting Jake Marti?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. And do you know if Mr. Mart knew that the speeches that were

presented at that meeting were prepared by members of Waste Management or

Rail-Cycle?

A. Yes, he did.

Q. And is that because you told him?

A. Because I told him because he was there when they came over to us by fax.

And he was there when they came over to us by fax. And he was there when they

were -- because we had to change some things around with -- to deal with --

there were numbers that had to be changed about the amount of people because

Waste Management didn't have the right amount of people when we were doing the

text, we changed a few of those things, it was sent back to Waste Management.

And we were given on copy when we were on the bus, and then we were given a

copy to practice, and we practiced giving speeches on the way in.

Q. So people were practicing their speeches on the bus?

A. Right.

Q. Now, Mr. Marti has testified that members of the community invited

Glen Odell to the first meeting of the FACE coalition because of concern

in the community about the water project. Is that true?

A. Well, I mean, yeah, it's true because that's what they believed they

did. Okay. You have to remember this, that most of the people up there,

didn't really realize what they were doing when they were doing it. Like

the speeches we just went through, they didn't think they were doing

anything wrong. They thought they were doing what was correct. They

really thought that they were having a meeting out there, inviting Glen

Odell. Except they didn't realize that I put the meeting together

myself. I was already working for Glen Odell at that point in time, so I

put the meeting together and made them think that they were doing it

themselves, and so the people up there -- you know, other than a few

people out there, and I don't want to go into it. Most of those people

are good-hearted people. I want to make that known. They really didn't

do it because they thought they were doing anything wrong. They really

believed because we made them believe. I made them believe. I lied and

did everything else I could possibly do from what Glen and the company told me

to do to make those people believe. Glen used to get a big kick out of it. He

thought that was real funny. In fact he thought it was real funny because we

were screwing -- we're taking people that have

been helped by Cadiz Land Company a lot longer, and turning them around

just because you had some slick guy in there -- and I don't mean to say

that I was slick, but I went in there and turned those people around and

had them crapping on Cadiz Land Company, and Cadiz Landfill helped them

out a lot longer than anything that Rail-Cycle had done, but because we

made them believe that -- we made them believe our own reality and

because they believed it, that's why they went and did the stuff they

did. I want to get off my soap box.

Q. Let me show you a document that was marked in litigation Plaintiff's

Exhibit 1 from Don Riddle to Larry Rowe, and let me ask you if you've

seen this document before together with the Resolution of the FACE

Environmental Coalition that's appended to the letter.

A. Well, that's an easy one. First of all, this fax that you're seeing

right here that you have probably seen a lot came off of my computer.

The reason I can tell that is they are half cut off. For some reason the

computer that I got from the office had a problem. This is my fax sheet.

In other words, I'm the one that sent it to Larry Rowe, General Manager.

The letter is a letter that was given to me which is dated May 26, 1995,

Mr. Larry Rowe, General Manager, Mojave Water Agency, regarding Cadiz

Land Company. And what it is, it's a letter telling Rowe or explaining

to Rowe that there is a new group out there called FACE Environmental

Coalition, it's a grass roots organization, blab, blab, blab, that sort

of thing, along with a resolution of FACE Environmental Coalition. This

letter was done up directly by Glen Odell. As a matter of fact, I was

supposed to have changed some of this around, but because we had to get it out

to him so quickly, we sent if off with just -- with Glen Odell's

kind of way of writing, his style without changing -- colloquializing,

making it sound like it was coming from the people, misspelling some of the

words in it or doing some type of things to it.

And the other thing, the Resolution of the FACE Environmental Coalition

Water Use in Fenner, Amboy, Cadiz and Essex Area, which is dated June

24, 1995, is also a resolution that was done from Glen. This was done on

my computer, so I rewrote this. And this one right here it appears that

they came directly off of Glen's computer. This is no my typeset.

Q. Okay.

A. It's not my type. So this was probably send directly from -- in fact,

I know it was. It was sent directly from the Irvine offices. I blacked

out the top of it and recopied it and sent it back out again.

(Off the record.)

Q. By Ms. Klar: After the group was formed were officers of the group

appointed in name at least?

A. In name. I think the way this thing worked out we held meetings

because Glen said that we had to have meetings to make it official. He

was real specific about how we had to do this thing. We had meetings,

and we named people to the different positions, but in reality nobody

ever did anything. It was just myself doing the paperwork, sending it

off and doing the press releases for the group and I would go over and

get the people, who gave time as a chairman to sign whatever needed to

be signed. In fact, if you see some of the paperwork, it's my signature

scribbled on stuff. That's why we showed Marti at the end, because he

wasn't doing anything and he was easy to get ahold of and he knew

exactly what was going on.

I think they tried -- a couple of times they had a couple of meeting

where they would go and talk, and that's where we would supply free

food, and if you dealt with people at Cadiz you'd understand the free

food was a big draw. I think everybody pretty much knew that. They knew

that.

Q. It would be fair to characterize it as a puppet organization?

A. Yeah. It was Rail-Cycle. I mean, it was real funny. I remember one of

the people that were against the project stood out in front of this

saying this is a puppet organization for Rail-Cycle, and there was a big

deal about that. In fact, I think you guys did that. And we vehemently

denied it in print. And I'm thinking to myself during this whole thing,

all this crap is ruining my life, but people bought it.

Q. And Mr. Odell knew that these allegations were being made that it was a

puppet organization and he condoned the vehement denials of that?

A. He not only condoned it, he would write the speeches that we used to fight

back on it. You got to remember anything that Rail-Cycle did in

connection with FACE Environmental or anything that we did against Cadiz Land

Company or with that board of supervisors or anything that I did went, we went

to Glen Odell, and they went through a group of people. Glen Odell didn't okay

it -- he okayed it, but it was always Stu Clark, it was always the attorneys

in the office, it was everybody. Everybody had to agree to the thing, it was

like a group thing.

Q. And how do you know that?

A. Because I was there at times when it was done or I would be told, we

need to bring this before legal, and we have to wait for a couple of

days, or, listen, I need to fly that by Stu before we do that. It was

pretty much with everything that's what happened.

Q. Now, after you had this meeting in May that's the subject of Exhibit

B when was the next sort of big event that you recall occurring in

connection with FACE?

A. You're going to love this because I can't remember dates. There was

so many other big events, I can't remember date of that.

Q. Tell me when you took your first trip to Hyder.

A. Oh, Hyder.

Q. Do you remember when that was in relation to the meeting?

A. If I had my computer and everything I could bring this stuff up and

give you the exact dates. I don't have the exact dates. I can tell you

what happened there.

Q. Okay. Before we get to that, Mr. Marti has testified that he was your

driver. Is that a fair characterization?

A. Sure. I guess that would be a fair characterization, yeah.

Q. And he said that you had an agreement with him pursuant to which you

got 35 cents a mile from Rail-Cycle and he got 30 cents of that 35

cents?

A. He's full of crap. He's not telling the truth, but basically I paid

him, but I mean he wasn't paid anywhere near the miles that -- he would

drive -- he would just drive and I paid for most of the car that he was

driving. I paid for the repair of that car. I paid for the windshield of

that car. I paid for the registration on that vehicle. I paid for the

insurance on that vehicle.

Q. Now, did you bill Rail-Cycle for mileage?

A. Yeah.

Q. And did they instruct you to inflate your mileage?

A. Well, yeah, because I had to pay myself, I had to pay Marti out of it

and Marti always got a good whack of it because we used his account to

cash the checks and he was always broke, plus it was his way of getting

paid. He kept saying that he wouldn't be the head of FACE Environmental

unless he was getting something out of it, so he was getting something

out of it in the way of money. He was probably the only one.

Continue to Part 2