community service. The court also dismissed its case against the third investigator, Bryan Wagner, who had pleaded guilty in federal jurisdiction. Federal criminal charges On January 11, 2007, Bryan Wagner (a private investigator who was engaged by Hewlett-Packard who had already been charged in the California case) was charged by the federal government with conspiracy and identity theft for allegedly obtaining the Social Security Number of an unidentified journalist to obtain the journalist's phone records. Wagner pleaded guilty to the charges. On August 12, 2009, his sentencing hearing was postponed. On December 13, 2012, Wagner was sentenced to serve three-months. Legal ramifications Before this controversy, pretexting was a legal grey area. California had laws that applied to pretexting, but there were no federal laws specific to pretexting. Partially as a result of the case, however, Congress passed the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006, which specifically prohibits pretexting. Since then, at least two other people have been prosecuted under the new law: November 2008 – Nicholas Shaun Bunch was charged with using a victim's name and the last four digits of his Social Security number to obtain confidential phone records from T-Mobile. December 2008 – Vaden Anderson was indicted for using pretexting to obtain confidential phone records from Sprint/Nextel. References Corporate scandals Espionage in the United States Espionage scandals and incidents Scandals in the United States 2006 in the United States Hewlett-Packard