San Jose, Calif. – Two private investigators and a Colorado man who worked for one of them pleaded not guilty Tuesday to four felony counts of using ruses to obtain private phone records in Hewlett-Packard’s boardroom leak investigation.
The pleas were entered by:
- Ronald R. DeLia, 56, operator of a Boston-area investigation firm.
- Matthew DePante, 27, manager of a Florida investigation company.
- Bryan Wagner, 29, of Littleton.
After the hearing, Wagner’s lawyer said his client had no idea he was obtaining the phone records of HP board members when he was asked by his then-employer, Action Research Group of Melbourne, Fla., to research some phone numbers.
“This is a practice that is very common in this industry,” said attorney Stephen Naratil.
Action Research is a “skip trace” firm that finds missing children, organ donors, deadbeat dads and felons, DePante’s father, Joseph DePante, recently told Florida Today.
Joseph DePante owns Action Research, and Matthew DePante is its manager.
Wagner, DeLia and DePante have been charged by the California attorney general’s office with using ruses or “pretexting” to obtain the private phone records of HP board members, employees and reporters.
Former HP board chairwoman Patricia Dunn and former HP senior counsel Kevin Hunsaker have also been charged with four felony counts. They made their first court appearances last week.
DeLia’s Security Outsourcing Solutions of Needham, Mass., was retained by HP last year and again in January to help Dunn investigate a boardroom leak. Hunsaker led the team of HP security operatives and outside contractors who did the investigation, which included conducting surveillance of reporters and trying to trick a CNET reporter into revealing her sources.
The attorney general says DeLia retained Action Research Group to research phone records of more than 24 individuals during the HP investigation, with Wagner doing the actual research.
In March, Action Research Group told DeLia it had processed 33 months of calls, or about 1,750 calls between all the subjects’ numbers, obtaining subscriber information on 590 land- line, cellular and toll-free numbers, according to a declaration by the attorney general’s office.
The AG’s complaint says the laws broken were: using fraud to obtain billing records from a public utility, taking data from a computer network without permission, identity theft and conspiracy.
The records were obtained by impersonating the legitimate customers without their consent, according to the AG’s court filing.
The three men promised Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Jerome Nadler they would return Nov. 17 for their next court date. They were released without bail.
