Bryan Wagner, who was hired by HP, was charged in a San Jose, California federal court for conspiracy and aggravated identify theft, including unauthorized computer access to information and wire fraud. The complaint said he conspired with others, known and unknown.
Californian state prosecutors already have charged Wagner and four other alleged conspirators, including ousted HP chairperson Patricia Dunn and former HP ethics director Kevin Hunsaker. Two additional outside private investigators were also charged. Each of the five accused have pleaded not guilty to four felony counts, including identity theft and conspiracy, and are currently awaiting trial.
The charges against Dunn and the others are pending in a state court, while Wagner has been charged by federal prosecutors. However, the federal court’s actions do not bode well for those involved in the scandal, given federal privacy laws are generally considered more lenient than California’s laws.
Californian prosecutors have alleged that Dunn gave the orders in the HP investigation that was initiated to ferret out board-room media leaks. Dunn alleged authorized illegal surveillance of HP board members, which resulted in George Keyworth losing his seat on the board for allegedly leaking confidential information to the media.
In early December, the company agreed to pay $14.5m to settle a civil case with the California’s Attorney General’s office and to establish a Privacy and Piracy Fund to better police privacy and intellectual property rights. The settlement essentially cleared HP’s corporate name by resolving allegations that the company used false pretenses to unlawfully access phone records.
Three private eyes hired by HP are accused of obtaining private phone records using the dubious practice known as pretexting, which is essentially using fraudulent means to garner sensitive personal information. Those PIs are Wagner, who is an investigator at Action Research Group; Ronald DeLia, managing director of Security Outsourcing Solutions; and Matthew Depante, manager of information broker Action Research Group.
Dunn has denied any knowledge that the investigators’ had used questionable methods to obtain the phone records of HP board members, employees and reporters.
And nothing in the federal filing against Wagner points the finger to her specifically. Rather, it refers to unnamed co-conspirators.
For example, Wagner obtained the Social Security number of an unnamed reporter from one of these co-conspirators, which he then used to establish a fraudulent online account to access the reporter’s phone records. Those records were then provided to the co-conspirators, according to court documents.
HP’s spying shenanigans first surfaced last September, following a complaint by former board member Thomas Perkins, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist, who was among the HP directors being investigated by HP.
Perkins quit in protest over HP’s alleged investigative tactics, and called for Dunn’s resignation for allegedly being the top link in the chain of command in the internal probe.
As many as seven HP directors, two employees, and nine reporters and their families are thought to have been subjected to pretexting as part of HP’s probe.
Also, at least two of HP’s targets were followed and some had their trash sorted through by investigators. The detectives also tried to trace emails, according to reports.
Dunn and the four defedants have been charged with using false or fraudulent pretenses to garner confidential information from a public utility, identity theft, unauthorized access to computer data, and conspiracy to commit these crimes. They face a maximum of three years in state prison for each charge.
Wagner, meanwhile, faces a maximum of five year’s prison time for conspiracy and a minimum of two years for aggravated identity theft, as charged by the feds.
