Donna Adelson Trial: FBI Agent Pat Sanford Breaks Down Wiretaps And Undercover “Bump”
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.3 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Trial of Donna Adelson turned a sharp corner today as FBI Special Agent Pat Sanford took the stand. His testimony focused on the heart of the government’s case: the surveillance, the wiretaps, and the bold undercover operation known as the “bump.” Jurors were walked through how agents set the trap by sending an undercover operative to approach Donna Adelson in public while posing as a gang member. What happened next was no accident.
Sanford explained that the goal of the bump was to provoke reaction—and that’s exactly what it did. Within minutes of Donna being approached, the Adelson family’s phones lit up. Donna called Charlie. Charlie called Katherine Magbanua. The web of connections prosecutors allege was behind the murder of Dan Markel was suddenly buzzing with nervous communication.
The jury listened as Sanford connected the dots, pointing out how innocent-sounding calls were layered with coded language and anxiety. Donna herself seemed calm on the surface, but her immediate pivot to calling Charlie showed investigators she was anything but. Sanford told the jury this was not random chatter—it was the language of a conspiracy under pressure.
For the prosecution, Sanford’s testimony is a crucial piece of the puzzle. It shows jurors how law enforcement went beyond theory and speculation. They engineered a real-time stress test that forced the Adelsons to show their hand. Whether jurors see it as calculated conspiracy or simply a worried family, Sanford’s calm and detailed breakdown gave them a roadmap to understanding the case.
#DonnaAdelsonTrial #FBIAgentTestimony #UndercoverBump #WiretapEvidence #CharlieAdelson #KatherineMagbanua #DanMarkelMurder #TrueCrimeTrial #CourtroomDrama #JusticeForDanMarkel
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is continuing coverage in the trial of Donna Adelson from the Hidden Killers podcast and true crime today. |
| 0:07.5 | Now, back to the courtroom. |
| 0:10.9 | So my role in the operation was of a gang member, and what I was instructed to do was to contact and bump Donna Adelson. |
| 0:21.6 | What does bump mean? |
| 0:23.6 | A bump is a law enforcement operation during which an undercover agent or an undercover |
| 0:32.6 | police officer would conduct a face-to-face meeting or encounter with a subject or a person of interest |
| 0:41.3 | in an investigation. |
| 0:44.3 | And what we look for, the results we look to get would be one or a combination of either |
| 0:53.3 | I would try to extract or the undercover would try to extract |
| 0:56.3 | information or they would try to pass on information or possibly set up a future |
| 1:03.4 | meeting with the individual or tickle wire or a telephonic intercept or it's a little wire. |
| 1:13.1 | In this case, was in an attempt to tickle the wire? |
| 1:16.1 | Yes, it was. |
| 1:16.7 | So we had a wiretap going at the time that you did the phone. |
| 1:20.3 | Yes. |
| 1:20.8 | Okay. And what does tickle the wire mean? |
| 1:24.1 | Well, when you tickle the wires, when you're doing a Title III, what we call Title III, |
| 1:29.0 | a phone intercept and there's not much activity going on on that phone intercept, what you |
| 1:37.0 | want to do is approach somebody and see if they will start talking about whatever the investigation is looking into. |
| 1:47.0 | All right. |
| 1:48.0 | So you were asked to approach Donna Aylson. Is that what you did? |
| 1:50.0 | That is correct. |
... |
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