California Files Criminal Complaint in Hewlett-Packard Probe

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California’s attorney general sought felony indictments Wednesday against former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and four others involved in the corporate spying scandal at the computer and printer company.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed criminal complaints in Santa Clara County Superior Court naming Dunn, ousted H-P chief ethics officer Kevin Hunsaker, private investigator Ronald DeLia, and outside investigators Joseph DePante of Melbourne, Fla. and Bryan Wagner of Littleton, Colo.

They each face four felony charges: use of false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility; unauthorized access to computer data; identity theft; and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes.

H-P CEO Mark Hurd is not among those charged, nor was H-P’s former General Counsel Ann Baskins, who had some oversight of the company’s investigation of media leaks.

The scandal erupted last month when H-P 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.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is expected to file criminal charges against former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairman Patricia Dunn; H-P’s former ethics lawyer, Kevin Hunsaker; and two others in connection with the company’s controversial leak investigations, according to an attorney familiar with the situation.

The two others are H-P’s lead outside investigator, Ronald DeLia of Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc., Needham, Mass., and Joe DePante, whose Melbourne, Fla.-based firm, Action Research Group, assisted H-P in obtaining the personal phone records of more than 20 people, including H-P directors and employees, as well as journalists and other outside parties.

It is unclear exactly what charges Mr. Lockyer intends to bring, but one of them will almost certainly involve California Penal Code Section 538.5, which specifically outlaws “executing a scheme or artifice to obtain, from a public utility” customers’ “billing records.” That appears to be exactly what H-P’s investigators did by making so-called pretexting calls using false pretenses to phone companies in order to obtain the investigative targets’ phone records.

And the California statute makes clear that it’s not only the people who obtain such information who could be criminally liable, but “every person who transmits or causes to be transmitted” the information. That nuance could prove particularly important in prosecutors’ case against Dunn, who instigated the leak probes in 2005 and 2006 and has acknowledged knowing that personal phone records were scrutinized. She has said she thought the records were obtained legally.

The criminal charges were disclosed Wednesday morning on Business-Week.com. Attorneys for Mrs. Dunn, Mr. Hunsaker, and Mr. DeLia did not return phone calls. A spokesman for Mr. Lockyer declined to comment. Mr. De-Pante did not return a phone call for comment.

Mr. Hunsaker, Mr. Delia and Mr. DePante last week declined to testify about the matter at a high-profile House subcommittee investigation last Thursday, citing their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Some notable names do not appear to be part of the initial indictments, including that of Ann Baskins, who resigned last week as H-P’s general counsel in connection with the scandal, and Tony Gentilucci, who resigned as H-P’s manager of global security investigations in the wake of the probe. Both of them also declined to testify last week, citing the Fifth Amendment. Their attorneys could not immediately be reached.

Mrs. Dunn, who testified for hours before the subcommittee, spearheaded the probe, which began in the spring of 2005 following leaks from the board that year and intensified after other leaks in early 2006. She acknowledged learning from Mr. DeLia that personal phone records were being obtained during the investigation, but said she believed it was a customary H-P practice that was done through legal means.

Mark Hurd, H-P’s chief executive, also is not expected to be targeted in the indictments. Mr. Hurd told the House subcommittee that he attended briefings where the investigation was discussed, adding that he didn’t recall hearing about the tactics investigators used.

However, a memo by H-P’s law firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, says Mr. Hurd told attorneys for the firm in August 2006 that he recalled that during one meeting, “probably on July 22, 2005,” somebody “mentioned obtaining phone records off the Web” as part of the probe.


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