Here’s a juicy one: Jim Letten, the U.S. Attorney in New Orleans, was an aggressive prosecutor of corruption for the past 12 years. He had been the longest serving federal prosecutor in a place where his talents were reportedly in need.
One of his more recent targets was Fred Heebe, a local landfill magnate and one-time candidate for Letten’s position. In 2011, Letten indicted Heebe’s chief financial officer, Dominick Fazzio, on charges of fraud and money launderingpresumably to gain his cooperation against Heebe. But in March of the same year, Heebeget thisfiled a defamation lawsuit against a commenter on nola.com (a news website affiliated with The Times-Picayune) who identified himself only as "Henry L. Mencken1951," and whose posts say things like "Heebe comes from a long line of corruptors"hardly the kind of thing Heebe lawyers, if he is ever indicted, would want the jury pool to have read.1 Heebe was convinced that "Mencken" was actually Sal Perricone, a veteran prosecutor in Letten’s office who was working on the Fazzio case.2 He was right. In fact, after he filed suit, Perricone admitted that he was Mencken and promptly "resigned."
