Isgro Pleads Not Guilty in Payola Case

Joseph Isgro, once one of the nation’s leading independent record promoters, pleaded not guilty Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to a 51-count indictment filed against him last week stemming from a three-year probe into “payola” in the record industry.

Isgro, 42, was named in a host of charges last week, including racketeering, conspiracy to defraud Columbia Records, making undisclosed payola payments to radio stations, mail fraud, filing false tax returns, conspiracy to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to impede the Internal Revenue Service.

U.S. Magistrate Volney V. Brown set a tentative trial date of Jan. 26, with U.S. District Court Judge James M. Ideman presiding. However, court observers said the case was unlikely to go to trial that soon, particularly since Isgro’s defense lawyer, Donald Re, is about to start another major criminal trial that is expected to last two months.

Last Friday, Brown lowered Isgro’s bail to $300,000 from the $500,000 that he had imposed a day earlier. Drew Pitt, a lawyer for the Justice Department’s organized crime strike force, argued that the bail should not be lowered to $100,000, as Isgro had requested, because in 1987 Isgro had threatened a potential witness in the case--David Smith, one of his former business associates.

On Monday, however, Re said that as recently as a week before the indictment, Smith had contacted him asking for help in finding a lawyer. Re said the fact that Smith made this request to him, knowing that he was Isgro’s lawyer, was “inconsistent” with the assertion that Isgro represented any kind of threat to Smith.

There are two other defendants in the case--Raymond Anderson, 49, of Pacific Palisades, a former executive of Columbia Records, and Jeffrey Monka, 31, of Agoura Hills, a former business associate of Isgro. Monka also pleaded not guilty Monday. Anderson is scheduled to be arraigned later this week.