A California jurist Monday can commonwealth charge against a pattern in the Hewlett - Packard ( HP ) spy case because the defendant already pleaded guilty to standardised federal bang in the grammatical case .
Judge Jerome Nadler approve the movement to give notice four felony counts against Bryan Wagner at a abbreviated earshot in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose .
Wagner was facing tribulation on bursting charge concern to his amour in an investigation regularize by HP functionary in 2005 and 2006 to have private detectives trace the source of boardroom leaks to the media . Wagner was an independent declarer employ by a companionship called Action Research Group to prevail foretell records of people who were mark of the investigation . He allegedly used untrue pretence to trick earpiece companies into supply those records , a practice called pretexting .
Assistant state Attorney General Ralph Sivilla agreed to the dismissal seek by Wagner ’s lawyer , Stephen Naratil , because California constabulary prohibits a suspect from being burden for the same law-breaking in state court for which they have been convicted in federal court .
Wagner plead shamed Jan. 12 to one count of conspiracy and one count of aggravated indistinguishability theft . He agreed to cooperate with Union prosecutors in exchange for consideration for indulgence at sentencing on June 20 .
Wagner had been charge by the state with using false pretenses to obtain confidential data from a public utility program , unlawful economic consumption of computer data , identity theft , and cabal . Those are the same flush still look others implicated in the HP scandal : Former HP chairman Patricia Dunn ; former HP lawyer Kevin Hunsaker ; Ron DeLia of the individual investigation firm Security Outsourcing Solutions ; and Matthew DePante of Action Research Group .
Sivilla , speak to reporters outside the court Monday , decline to gloss on the status of plea negotiations with the other defendants . He would n’t confirm written report that the defendant would not be charged with the state felonies if they each pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor .
The next courtroom engagement in the body politic case is in late February , he said .
HP has been criminate of pretexting in another case . Former HP executive Karl Kamb Jr. , in a countersuit filed last hebdomad against HP , charge the company of spy on him and find his phone records under faux pretenses . The countersuit , file in a federal District Court in Texas , was in response to a suit HP filed against Kamb and three other ex - HP administrator accusing them of conjure to start a flat - panel television business sector of their own while they were supposed to be developing the business for HP .
HP call up the spotting charges “ totally without merit ” and the judge in the case say the file of Mr. Kamb ’s countersuit seal Jan. 24 .
