Pair is sentenced to six months of home monitoring after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit Social Security fraud whilst working for HP.
Two former private investigators have been sentenced to 
three years of probation for their involvement in a spying scandal to procure information on HP employees, journalists and family members whilst hired by the OEM, reports the Washington Post.
Private investigators Joseph DePante, 66, and Matthew DePante, 33, will also undergo six months of electronic home monitoring after both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit Social Security fraud.
The father-and-son team were first hired by HP in 2005 in a bid to discover who was leaking boardroom information to journalists. However HP and private investigators obtained information on board members and employees, as well as reporters from CNET, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Family members of reporters were also targeted.
The DePantes have been accused of pretexting, an illegal practise of pretending to be someone else in order to acquire information, in a bid to obtain private telephone logs. HP is also accused of positioning other investigators to obtain personal information including phone numbers, Social Security numbers, birth dates and call logs.
However Joseph DePante’s laywer Susy Ribero-Ayala has argued that the pair’s Florida-based firm Action Research Group has acted “in good faith” as the state of Florida allows pretexting: “[Joseph] made a mistake here. He didn’t set out to violate any laws. They all believed it was legal conduct.”
However journalist Dawn Kawamoto, who found herself and her family targeted during her tenure at CNET commented in court: “[The DePantes] clearly knew what they were doing. Six months of house arrest eating bon-bons on your coach and watching ‘The Price is Right’ is not a lesson.”
Kawamoto spoke on the difficulties that followed among her family and professional life, noting that some sources would not work with her: “As journalists, we’re only as good as the people who return our calls.”
Charges in connection to the case against Patricia Dunn, then-HP Chairwoman, were dismissed in 2007.