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Judge Drops Charges Against Ex-HP Chair
SAN
JOSE, Calif. (March 07) – A judge dropped the charges Wednesday against
former Hewlett-Packard Co. board Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who was
accused of fraud in the company’s boardroom spying scandal.Three other
defendants in the case will also avoid jail time after their lawyers
entered no contest pleas to misdemeanor charges of fraudulent wire
communications in Santa Clara Superior Court.The charges against former
HP ethics chief Kevin Hunsaker, and private investigators Ronald DeLia
and Matthew DePante will also be dropped in September after they
complete 96 hours of community service and make restitution, the judge
said.State prosecutors announced earlier Wednesday that Dunn and the
three other defendants had agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges.
According to a release from the attorney general’s office, the
community service requirement for Dunn would be waived because of her
health; Dunn revealed last year that she was being treated for advanced
ovarian cancer.The California Attorney General’s office issued a
statement saying that its news release “mistakenly predicted that the
HP defendants would enter ‘guilty’ pleas to a misdemeanor count of
fraudulent wire communications.””This is a vindication of Patty Dunn in
every sense of the word,” said her lawyer, James Brosnahan. “It shows
what she’s maintained throughout: that she’s innocent of these
charges.”The four were initially charged in October with four felony
counts: 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.Each of those charges carried a fine of up to $10,000 and three
years in prison.While the deal with state prosecutors allows all four
defendants to escape jail time, federal prosecutors have said their
investigation of the HP leaks probe is ongoing.Dunn, Hunsaker, DeLia and Depante did not attend the hearing.
A
fifth defendant, private investigator Bryan Wagner, was also charged in
October. But the state’s case against him was dropped after Wagner
pleaded guilty to the same charges in federal court and agreed to
testify for the prosecution.No other federal charges have been filed in
connection with HP’s effort to spy on its own board members.The
boardroom scandal shook Silicon Valley’s oldest and biggest technology
company, with Dunn stepping down as chairwoman and several other top
executives resigning over their roles in the subterfuge.HP’s
investigation, which took place in 2005 and 2006, erupted into a
national scandal after HP disclosed that the detectives it hired had
obtained the private phone records of directors, employees and
journalists in an effort to ferret out the source of media leaks.Using
a shady tactic known as “pretexting,” the detectives obtained the
Social Security numbers of their targets and fooled telephone companies
into divulging their detailed call logs.
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