Tarita tells of virtues of life with Pellicano

She may have a name straight out of pulp fiction, but there's nothing unreal about Tarita Virtue. While Hollywood awaits the testimony of studio bosses, agents and actors in the trial of Anthony Pellicano, "private eye to the stars", Virtue, a former model and trainee investigator, has been telling a Los Angeles court about the sophisticated range of surveillance equipment used by Pellicano to trap wives, lovers and business partners on behalf of his wealthy clients.

Virtue, who is due back on Tuesday to be cross-examined, has described a 'war room' at Pellicano's Sunset Strip offices, packed with computer equipment on which 'Telesleuth' software captured hour upon hour of wiretapped conversations of the investigator's targets.

Virtue told how Pellicano took her on as a $30,000-a-year investigator-in-training in 2000. He quickly learned that TeleSleuth could not only mark the exact time of wiretapped statements, it could also translate telephone touch-tones into numbers so that Pellicano could obtain valuable confidential financial information, such as a target's bank account or credit card numbers.

Testifying under a grant of immunity, Virtue told how police records provided by ex-Los Angeles police sergeant Mark Arneson - one of Pellicano's four co-defendants - were re-typed into the computers so that the originals could be shredded to destroy evidence of wrongdoing.

"Was there a lot of shredding going on at the Pellicano Investigative Agency?" prosecutor Daniel Saunders asked.

"Yes," Virtue said.

"Did defendant Pellicano ever tell you why?" Saunders continued.

"It was kind of obvious," Virtue said, grinning.