US prosecutors filed criminal charges yesterday against Hewlett-Packard's former chairwoman and four others involved in a corporate spying scandal at the Silicon Valley tech giant.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer accused two ousted HP insiders - chairwoman Patricia Dunn and chief ethics officer Kevin Hunsaker - and three outside investigators of violating state privacy laws in HP's quest to root out the source of boardroom leaks.
They each face four felony counts: use of false or fraudulent pretences to obtain confidential information from a public utility; unauthorised access to computer data; identity theft; and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes. Each charge carries a fine of up to $10,000 and three years in prison.
HP CEO Mark Hurd is not among those charged, nor was HP's former general counsel Ann Baskins, who had some oversight of the company's investigation of media leaks.
The scandal erupted last month when HP disclosed that detectives it hired to root out a series of boardroom leaks secretly obtained detailed phone logs of directors, employees and journalists.
The detectives used a potentially criminal form of subterfuge known as pretexting to masquerade as their targets and trick telephone companies into turning over the records.
According to the criminal complaint, private investigators working for HP compromised the personal data of more than 24 people, including HP directors, employees and journalists.
By March, the detectives had compiled records of 1,750 phone calls made on 157 cellular phones and 413 landlines.
AP