Cunningham loot hits block

Auction attracts the scandal-curious and antiques-lovers alike

24 Mar 2006 // Morgan Stewart sent an e-mail to friends early yesterday before driving from her Valley Center home to a warehouse in an industrial park here near Long Beach.

“I'm going to Cunningham's booty auction,” she told them.

Stewart , who calls herself “a liberal Democrat,” is no fan of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham but she wanted a piece of history. For $1,150, she got one.

Two, actually: a pair of cobalt blue candlestick holders that were among the bribes Cunningham pocketed in one of the biggest corruption scandals in the history of Congress.

“I'm going to display them in my house,” she said.

Stewart initially planned to put them on her dinner table but, concerned about the dangers posed by her adventurous cat, instead chose the fireplace mantel.

“It was used to buy a congressman and he got caught,” she said. “It almost has a moral connection.”

The items auctioned off yesterday totaled $94,625 – a small part of the more than $2.4 million in bribes Cunningham took. But to Stewart, they epitomized the extent of his corruption.

“He's a crook,” she said. “He's in jail, where he belongs.”

While bidders like Stewart wanted Cunningham's items for their historical significance, others sought bargains on the expensive goods. And a few bidders had no idea who Cunningham was or what crimes he committed.

About 600 people, some sitting in rows of chairs, others standing, were chatting loudly when the auction began and items from the other cases were sold.

Then, a hush fell over the room when auctioneer Paul Leiker called their attention to Item 61, the first of the Cunningham valuables to be auctioned. It was a pair of silver candelabra.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that's something you've been waiting for all morning,” he said, before launching into the auctioneer's patter. The bids quickly escalated from $500 to the winning bid of $2,000.

Buyers excitedly drove up some prices, as when Emilio Viscomi squared off several times against Robert Ro.

Ro bought a rug the disgraced congressman used to decorate his Rancho Santa Fe mansion, and he was quickly surrounded by more than a dozen photographers and reporters covering the auction.

An investment banker, Ro said he's an old hand at auctions, which he uses to furnish homes in Orange County and Ohio. He was surprised when he learned the rug he'd just bought belonged to Cunningham.

“The guy in San Diego?” Ro asked. “I did not know that.”

Viscomi of Dana Point, who bought other items from the Cunningham cache, including a $2,100 leather sofa, said he, too, was planning to put the furnishings in his home.

“I'd like to have them,” he said. “That they belonged to Congressman Cunningham had no impact.”

For Brian Hall, of Yuma, Ariz., the opposite was true.

“We just wanted to get part of the collection,” he said minutes after spending $2,400 on an oak hall tree – a combination coat rack, mirror and umbrella stand – which he planned to put in his home.

He couldn't quite explain why he wanted something from the Cunningham scandal.

“It's not my place to judge,” he said when asked what he thought of the former congressman.

Many of the auction participants said they were attracted by media coverage.

That probably drove prices up, said Karl Mason, a liquidator who flew in from Dallas for the auction but didn't buy anything.

“Everything was excessively overpriced,” he said, pointing out a reproduction Tiffany lamp that sold for $850. “It's a $150 retail item.”

Fidel Breto of Moreno Valley, who bought a nightstand he plans to put next to his bed, had a different opinion.

“Antiques are antiques,” he said. “You pay what you want to pay.”

Breto said he was disgusted by the bribery scandal but content to own something that Cunningham accepted as a bribe.

The nightstand, he said, “didn't belong to him to begin with.”

Cunningham surrendered the antiques – including chests of drawers, a sleigh-style bed, numerous armoires and a leather sofa – and other furnishings soon after pleading guilty Nov. 28 to conspiracy and tax evasion in a bribery scandal that ended his political career.

He is now in a federal prison in Butner, N.C., where doctors will evaluate his mental and physical health will be evaluated before officials decide where he will serve his 8-year, 4-month prison sentence.

The goods were part of the largesse Cunningham took over nearly five years from businessmen in Poway, Washington D.C. and Long Island, N.Y.

In return, Cunningham said he used his powerful connections in Congress and the Pentagon to steer defense contracts to two of the businessmen.

Cunningham personally picked out the antiques during shopping trips to stores in and near the nation's capital and let one of the businessmen pick up the tab, according to prosecutors.

The Washington D.C. businessman, Mitchell Wade, also bought Cunningham's Del Mar-area house at an inflated price. Wade also paid to ship the antiques from the congressman's Virginia condo to a Rancho Santa Fe mansion Cunningham bought, in part, with the huge profit he made in selling the home at well over market value.

Cunningham has admitted steering millions of dollars worth of government contracts to Wade's MZM Inc.

Wade has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and making illegal campaign contributions but has not yet been sentenced. He also sold his interest in the company. Federal investigators began probing Cunningham's relationship with Wade and other businessmen after a Copley News Service story in The San Diego Union-Tribune outlined the bogus house deal.

Cunningham and other people involved in the case were prevented from bidding on the items auctioned yesterday.

The proceeds will go to the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division. The government appraisal of how much the goods were worth was not made public.

The items were sold along with numerous other items seized by investigators or surrendered by their owners in other cases. Some were part of drug raids. Importers who didn't want to pay import dues abandoned other items.