In a trial involving allegations that Anthony Pellicano and others illegally accessed law enforcement computers, Pellicano’s defense was allegedly aided . . . by a guy illegally accessing law enforcement computers. Because he wanted to please his girlfriend, the star of the movie “The Last Seduction.”

The Washington Post reports:

A longtime FBI agent has been accused of accessing bureau computers to help high-profile Los Angeles private investigator Anthony Pellicano in his recent federal trial on wiretapping and racketeering charges, according to charging documents and law enforcement officials familiar with the case.

Mark T. Rossini, 47, who lives in New York, was charged Monday in U.S. District Court here with five misdemeanor counts of illegally accessing computers at the bureau’s headquarters between January and July 2007. Officials say he was searching for reports dealing with Pellicano.

If that isn’t weird enough, enter the star of the movie “The Last Seduction”:

Rossini’s girlfriend, the actress Linda Fiorentino, known for her role in “The Last Seduction,” has personal ties to Pellicano, according to law enforcement officials.

Linda Fiorentino
Source: RadarOnline.com

A July 2007 RadarOnline post fleshes this out a bit:

The star of The Last Seduction and Jade [Fiorentino] is dating an FBI agent and, say sources, taking more than a passing interest in his work. The agent, counterterrorism specialist Mark Rossini, recently transferred from Washington, D.C., to New York, partly, according to one source, to be closer to Fiorentino, with whom he’s often seen dining at Elaine’s, the uptown restaurant favored by the literary crowd.

Here’s where it gets weird: Rossini has apparently been accepting—or soliciting—Fiorentino’s help with criminal investigations, including the one against jailed private investigator Anthony Pellicano. “He’s a big gossip,” says one source. “He talks about all the help she’s been giving him on cases.” On another unrelated case, a different source recalls being surprised when he showed up for a meeting with FBI agents to find they had brought Fiorentino along with them. He says the actress seemed “really unstable.”

There’s something comforting about knowing that an FBI counterterror expert was described by friends describe as a “big gossip.” Don’t you think? And I sleep easier thinking of guys like that getting criminally charged with misusing government computers on behalf of a guy like Pellicano.

But putting that aside, let’s get back to the connections between Fiorentino and Pellicano. The July 2007 post, naively (it seems in retrospect) reported:

Sources say Fiorentino has been exchanging letters with Anthony Pellicano for the past two years—letters whose content they suspect she’s been relaying to her boyfriend. “She’s playing both sides,” insists one source.

Not so much! Because if the charges against Rossini are true, then “both sides” were really the same side — because Fiorentino’s boyfriend was (allegedly) in league with Pellicano to aid the defense of his criminal case.

A May 2006 Hollywood Interrupted post provides some truly eye-opening details about the actress. The post explains that Fiorentino was enraged at an attorney, Marty Singer, whom she believed had double-crossed her in her legal efforts to be paid for a movie she had agreed to do with a child rapist who doubled as a director. I’m not making this up. The post says that, according to a source,

the actress became obsessed with the idea that Singer might get indicted in the legal scandal erupting around hack PI Anthony Pellicano’s notorious wiretapping escapades. In her effort to dig up dirt on Singer, Fiorentino reportedly befriended the Pelican’s ex-wife, Kat Pellicano.

But, the post says, Kat Pellicano got freaked out when Fiorentino started taping Pellicano’s children. Then “Kat reportedly caught Fiorentino attempting to hack into her personal computer.”

Spying on the spy’s ex-wife.

Also revealed in the Washington Post article:

In court filings in March 2007, Pellicano’s lawyers reference obtaining an FBI report that they said prosecutors should have turned over to them during pretrial discovery. The report raised questions about an FBI agent’s credibility, the lawyers wrote. A law enforcement official said Rossini was the source of that document.

So this accused FBI agent provides information to Pellicano to question the credibility of an FBI agent. I believe it is Stan Ornellas. The March 2007 court filings referred to in the Post report appear to include this document, which contains the following passage:

And the document as a whole attacks the credibility of (now retired) FBI Special Agent Stanley Ornellas . . . the man who wrote the search warrant to get into Pellicano’s office. The man whose credibility was repeatedly attacked in a series of articles written by a former L.A. Times reporter named Chuck Philips.

Well, you knew this would all circle around back to him, didn’t you?

So Chuck Philips’s series of articles questioning the credibility of FBI Agent Ornellas was based in part on information that Pellicano’s team allegedly received from a rogue FBI agent working on behalf of Pellicano, at the behest of his reportedly unbalanced girlfriend, Linda Fiorentino, the sultry actress of old.

Is this town great or what?

UPDATE: More on all of this here, including details about how Rossini was caught, and competing theories of the intrigue behind it all.