Dunn Appears in Court in HP Spy Probe

Hewlett-Packard Company's Patricia Dunn speaks during a news conference at HP headquarters in a Palo Alto, Calif. file photo from March 30, 2005. California's attorney general will seek criminal indictments Wednesday against former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and four others involved in the corporate spying scandal, according to news reports. Citing people familiar with the case, The New York Times and BusinessWeek reported that Dunn, Kevin Hunsaker, HP's ousted chief ethics officer, and Ronald DeLia, a Boston-area private investigator, would each face criminal charges. Two other outside investigators Joseph DePante of Melbourne, Fla. and Bryan Wagner of Littleton, Colo. were also being charged, the Times said. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File) (Paul Sakuma - AP)

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Ousted Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn surrendered to authorities Thursday, a day after she and four others were charged in HP's ill-fated investigation to ferret out the source of boardroom leaks.

Dunn, 53, who initiated the probe that has shaken Silicon Valley's largest and oldest technology company, made a brief appearance in Santa Clara County Superior Court to sign a promise to return on Nov. 17 for her arraignment.

She declined an onlooker's request for an autograph as she exited the courthouse and hopped into a chauffeur-driven sedan for the short trip to the county sheriff's office, where she was fingerprinted, photographed, booked and released.

Neither Dunn nor an attorney representing her, S. Raj Chatterjee, would comment Thursday afternoon.

But in an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes to be broadcast Sunday, Dunn defended the investigation of directors and members of the media, saying she initiated the probe "at the request of this board to solve a serious problem."

"Investigations, by their nature, are intrusive," Dunn said, according to excerpts released by the network on Thursday. "If you think that Hewlett-Packard is the only company that has an investigations force _ which by the way, is peopled mostly with former law enforcement officers that do all kinds of private detective work, monitoring, posing as other people in order to solve problems to protect shareholder value _ you're being naive."

She was charged Wednesday along with former HP chief ethics officer Kevin Hunsaker and three investigators _ Ronald DeLia, Matthew DePante and Bryan Wagner.

Hunsaker was booked and released Thursday morning, and his arraignment was scheduled for Dec. 6, his legal team said.

The five each face four felony counts: use of false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility; unauthorized access to computer data; identity theft; and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes. Each charge carries a fine of up to $10,000 and three years in prison.

HP CEO Mark Hurd is not among those named in the complaint, nor was HP's former General Counsel Ann Baskins, who had some oversight over the probe.

HP's investigation, which took place earlier this year and in 2005, erupted into a national scandal last month after HP disclosed that detectives it hired had obtained the private phone records of directors, employees and journalists in HP's effort to ferret out the source of media leaks.

Using a shady tactic known as "pretexting," the detectives obtained the Social Security numbers of their targets and fooled telephone companies into divulging their detailed call logs.