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10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Marvin Rudnick.md
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@ -3,22 +3,39 @@ category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
tags:
- Person
- Lawyer
- FBI
- LawEnforcement
summary: "Federal prosecutor on the Justice Department's organized-crime investigation of MCA in the 1980s, who according to Cheri Seymour lost his job for refusing to drop it."
- OrganizedCrime
summary: "Los Angeles Organized Crime Strike Force prosecutor who twice convicted MCA's middleman Sal Pisello of tax evasion and was removed from the Justice Department by letter on July 6, 1989."
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Department of Justice]]"
role: "trial attorney, Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, Los Angeles strike force"
end: 1989-07-06
fn: 2
- type: prosecuted
with: "[[Sal Pisello]]"
fn: 2
- type: investigated
with: "[[Music Corporation of America]]"
fn: 1
fn: 2
- type: reported_to
with: "[[John Newcomer]]"
fn: 2
created: 2026-05-14
updated: 2026-09-22
---
[[Marvin Rudnick]] was a federal prosecutor who, according to [[Cheri Seymour]], supervised the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] wiretap investigation of [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]]. He, along with FBI agent [[Thomas Gates]] and [[Richard Stavin]] of the Organized Crime Strike Force, believed that MCA had been penetrated by organized crime, based on the wiretaps.[^1]
Marvin Rudnick was a prosecutor with the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]'s Organized Crime Strike Force in [[Los Angeles]] who twice convicted [[Sal Pisello|Salvatore Pisello]], a middleman in business dealings with [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]] Records, of tax evasion; the second conviction was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit in 1989.[^2][^3] He had earlier made his name as a prosecutor in Florida.[^2]
Rudnick subsequently lost his job when he refused to drop the investigation into MCA. In her account the wiretaps were later sealed by the [[Department of Justice|DOJ]], and no case against MCA or its executives followed; the investigation did produce the tax-evasion conviction of the MCA middleman [[Sal Pisello|Salvatore Pisello]], affirmed by the Ninth Circuit in 1989.[^2] The [[Los Angeles]] Organized Crime Strike Force was disbanded, and Rudnick's efforts to expose the alleged organized crime penetration of MCA were thwarted.[^1]
### The Strike Force
After losing his job, Rudnick eventually had part of his story told in the 1993 book, *Stiffed: A True Story of MCA, The Music Business, and the Mafia* by William Knoedelseder.[^1]
Rudnick sought to extend the Pisello investigation into MCA Records. [[Michael DeFeo]], deputy chief of the strike force in Washington, took him off the investigation of the record promoter Joe Isgro, and [[David Margolis]], its chief, told him he was becoming "too high-profile" in the Pisello case. In July 1988 Rudnick was told that [[John Newcomer]], head of the Los Angeles strike force, was putting negative reports in his personnel file, and the department opened formal proceedings against him. In mid-August Newcomer immunized Pisello and put him before the grand jury without telling Rudnick, who learned of it from reporters.[^2]
On July 6, 1989, Rudnick received a two-sentence letter from [[Edward Dennis]], the acting deputy attorney general: "This is to inform you that pursuant to the authority set forth in 28 C.F.R. 0.15 you are hereby removed from your position as trial attorney (general), organized crime and racketeering section, criminal division." He had been in public service for thirteen years. The department described the removal as a "personnel matter" arising from his relationship with Newcomer. His colleague [[Richard Stavin]], who had taken over the payola case, had resigned that May, saying, "I was convinced I was about to become the next Marvin Rudnick." Rudnick went into private practice in Pasadena.[^2]
[[Cheri Seymour]] wrote that Rudnick, Stavin and the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] agent [[Thomas Gates]] believed on the basis of wiretaps that MCA had been penetrated by organized crime, that the wiretaps were sealed, and that the Los Angeles strike force was disbanded.[^1] The account of the case by [[William Knoedelseder, Jr.|William Knoedelseder]] of the *[[Los Angeles Times]]*, *Stiffed*, was published in 1993.[^2]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
[^2]: *United States v. Pisello,* 877 F.2d 762 (9th Cir. 1989). https://openjurist.org/877/f2d/762
[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010.
[^2]: Knoedelseder, William. *Stiffed: A True Story of MCA, the Music Business, and the Mafia.* HarperCollins, 1993, pp. xix, 75, 407-408, 448, 461-463. Read through the archive.org BookReader search, item stiffedtruestory00knoe.
[^3]: *United States v. Pisello,* 877 F.2d 762 (9th Cir. 1989). https://openjurist.org/877/f2d/762