A judge dismissed the criminal case against former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairman Patricia Dunn on Wednesday.
The California Attorney General’s office stated earlier Wednesday that Dunn and three other defendants — Kevin Hunsaker, Ronald DeLia and Matthew DePante — would plead guilty to misdemeanor counts in the boardroom spying case.
But in a later statement, it admitted error. Dunn did not enter any plea to the charges, the Attorney General’s office said. The three other defendants pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of fraudulent wire communications. The court did not accept their plea but offered to dismiss the case against them if they completed 96 hours of community service and paid restitution to victims, the Attorney General’s office said in the later statement.
Dunn’s attorney, James Brosnahan of Morrison & Foerster LLP, said Wednesday that the judge had done the right thing.
“We have maintained from the beginning that Pattie Dunn was innocent and thus vigorously fought the charges against her. Today, the judge dismissed the case. Ms. Dunn did not plead to anything,” Brosnahan said in a prepared statement.
Hunsaker was an HP lawyer; DeLia is an investigator with private investigation firm Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc.; and DePante was a third-party consultant working with Action Research Group.
The four defendants had been charged with fraudulent wire communications, wrongful use of computer data, identity theft and conspiracy. On the corporate level, HP agreed in December to pay US$14.5 million in order to settle potential civil charges in the case.
In January, the California attorney general offered to drop felony charges against the four defendants if they pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor each.
Authorities began investigating HP last year after the company revealed it hired private detective agencies to trace the source of leaks from HP’s board to reporters. The private detectives allegedly used a tactic called pretexting — pretending to be the people they were investigating — to gain unauthorized access to telephone records of targets of the HP investigation.
As a result, former chairman Dunn has already stepped down from her job, as did Hunsaker.