Private eye jailed over computer hacking

Published on Monday 28 January 2008 21:18

A CROOKED private detective who helped to spy on Tamara Mellon, the founder of the Jimmy Choo designer shoe firm, was jailed for 21 months yesterday.

David Carroll played a leading role in a London agency specialising in computer hacking and telephone tapping.

Active Investigation Services (AIS) made its money from broken marriages, family disputes and even industrial espionage.

London's Southwark Crown Court heard, however, that behind its veneer of respectability lay a "backbone of dishonesty" and its lucrative "Hackers Are Us" sideline.

The firm's well-heeled customers included banking heir Matthew Mellon – the agency's job being to discover his estranged wife's financial secrets.

The court was told Mr Mellon paid the company thousands of pounds to find out if his estranged wife was concealing financial information in the run-up to their acrimonious divorce.

But he was cleared of any wrongdoing after explaining through his barrister that he had no idea the detective agency would break the law.

Clients could choose from a shopping list of confidential information. Phone tapping cost 3,000, itemised line billing 750 a month, while personal banking information could be bought for 2,000 and confidential medical records for 500.

Hacking into a computer, using viruses made to order by an expert in the United States, was available for 5,000.

The company even stooped to using disabled car parking badges illegally during operations and occasionally lied to customers to conceal failure.

Carroll, 60, from London, was convicted last year of six conspiracy counts of hacking into computers and tapping phones between September 2003 and September 2004.

Passing sentence, Judge Paul Dodgson told him "he was quite convinced" Carroll was the "right-hand man" of Jeremy Young, 40, who ran AIS while on sick leave from his post as an officer with the Metropolitan Police. He was jailed last year for 27 months.

"It is right you were only involved for a period of a year or so, but it is significant, when one looks at the timeline, that the bulk of the illegalities occurred then," the judge told Carroll.

Dismissing a probation officer's non-custodial recommendation as "extraordinary and ridiculous", the judge added that prison was inevitable for such serious offences.