Prosecutor: I Didn’t Profit From Tommy K!

A federal prosecutor filed court papers yesterday formally rejecting the assertion that he indirectly profited from the ill-gotten largesse of several-time-felon Thomas Kontogiannis.

Two weeks ago, attorneys for John Michael, who’s facing money laundering charges in the Duke Cunningham scandal, issued a j’accuse of their own. It so happened that Phil Halpern, an assistant U.S. attorney on the Michael case, had an uncle named Leonard, who lived on the same Nassau County, New York cul-de-sac as Tommy K. Two years after Leonard died in 2003, Tommy K’s daughter, Annette Apergis, bought the Halpern property using an account of her father’s connected to laundering money for Cunningham-directed bribes. Michael attorney Ray Granger asked, essentially: What are the odds?

It gets weirder.

The transaction wasn’t recorded until March, the month after Kontogiannis pleaded guilty to his own money-laundering charges and (presumably) agreed to cooperate with the prosecution of his nephew. Granger accused the government of allowing Kontogiannis to continue to profit off his crimes. As a result, Michael’s lawyers want his case dismissed, or, at least, Halpern stripped from the prosecution and — most importantly — a prohibition on Kontogiannis’ prospective testimony.

Nothing doing, says Halpern. He denies profiting at all from the sale of his uncle’s house, and calls the whole incident a fluke of circumstance. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

“In approximately September 2005, I learned that Mr. Kontogiannis lived on the same street as my father’s brother,” Halpern wrote in an affidavit submitted to the judge. “Other than remarking on the coincidence to the members of the investigation team, I took no action as a result of learning of this coincidence.”

The prosecution denies that Kontogiannis is allowed to profit from his crimes. Judge Larry Burns is expected to issue a ruling on the imbroglio on September 4.

Update: This post initially wrote that Leonard Halpern died in 2005, when in fact he died in 2003. I regret the error.