First Conviction in Hewlett Packard Pretexting Investigation

cybercrime.gov, Jan 18, 2007

The U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI for the Northern District of California today announced that Bryan C. Wagner, 29, admitted in federal court to using fraud and deceit in collecting personal telephone records of reporters and Hewlett-Packard (HP) officials. In pleading guilty to two felony counts, Wagner admitted today that he was paid as part of a conspiracy that made fraudulent use of social security numbers and other confidential information to obtain the personal phone records of reporters and HP officials, as well as the personal records of these individuals’ family members.

A criminal information was filed on Wednesday charging Wagner with two felony counts. According to the allegations, HP engaged the services of Security Outsourcing Solutions (SOS), a security consulting company located in Boston, Mass., to obtain information used in what has become know as the "Kona I" and "Kona II" investigations. Kona I began in approximately April 2005 and Kona II started in approximately January 2006. According to court documents, one objective of these investigations was to identify potential leaks from HP officials to news reporters. Co-conspirators pursued a number of avenues during the investigations including requesting and obtaining confidential personal information of subjects they targeted, including the board members and journalists noted above. According to the charges, SOS engaged the services of Action Research Group (ARG), located in Melbourne, Fla., who in turn engaged the services of Mr. Wagner to assist with obtaining confidential personal information for the Kona investigations.

Wagner was charged with being a member of a conspiracy which gathered the personal and confidential information of HP board members; news reporters at CNET, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and BusinessWeek; and the family members of these board members and reporters.

Defendant Wagner, of Littleton, Colo., and Omaha, Neb., was charged in participating in a conspiracy wherein conspirators a) targeted HP subjects as potential leaks, b) collected and obtained Social Security numbers of many of the Kona subjects, c) exchanged the confidential personal information with other co-conspirators and others in order to obtain additional information, d) engaged in fraud and deceit by misrepresenting their identity to obtain additional confidential information of the HP Kona subjects, and e) transmitted the confidential personal information to others. Read more at cybercrime.gov