Federal prosecutors scored their first victory in the investigation of Hewlett-Packard Co's ill-fated boardroom spying probe on Friday, when a low-level private investigator pleaded guilty to identity theft and conspiracy charges.
Bryan Wagner, 29, of Littleton, Colorado, pleaded guilty to the two felony counts during his initial appearance in San Jose federal court.
As part of the plea deal, Wagner admitted to illegally obtaining Social Security numbers and other personal information to snoop on the private phone records of journalists, former HP directors and their family members as part of HP's crusade to ferret out the source of boardroom leaks to the media.
Wagner acknowledged using a form of subterfuge known as "pretexting" -- or pretending to be someone else -- to fool telephone companies into coughing up records on former HP directors Tom Perkins and George Keyworth II, and reporters Pui-Wing Tam of the Wall Street Journal and Dawn Kawamoto of CNet's News.com.
Wagner admitted using the personal information to set up online accounts in the targets' names between April 2005 and September last year to access their call logs and billing records.
Wagner's defense lawyer, Stephen Naratil, said his client would testify for the prosecution as it pursues other figures tied to the scandal. He declined to say whom Wagner would testify against or what he had already told prosecutors.
Wagner's sentencing was set for June 20 in a San Jose federal court. There was no sentencing agreement included in the plea deal.
Wagner faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of two years on the identity theft charge and a maximum of five years for conspiracy, but prosecutors can ask the court for a more lenient sentence if they are satisfied with his level of cooperation.
Naratil described his client as the "little guy" who was tricked by other people higher up in the HP investigation's chain of command into thinking the investigative methods were legal. Wagner never had any contact with anyone inside HP, Naratil said.
In court, Assistant US Attorney Mark Krotoski said Wagner was hired by Matthew DePante of Florida-based Action Research Group to unearth the telephone records and distribute them to other unnamed co-conspirators. DePante paid Wagner an unspecified amount and provided him with the Social Security numbers, Krotoski said.
DePante has not been charged in the federal case.
Wagner, Depante and three others were charged in October in a state court with four felony counts each of conspiracy, fraud and identity theft for their alleged roles in the HP spying scandal.
The others charged were former HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who initiated the investigation, former HP ethics chief Kevin Hunsaker, who directed the probe and Ronald DeLia, a longtime HP security contractor who runs a Boston-area detective firm called Security Outsourcing Solutions.
DeLia was allegedly contracted by HP to perform the leak probe work and subsequently contracted the work out to DePante's firm.
HP has declined to comment on Wagner's case because he was not an HP employee.
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