AP - US
September 27, 2006 12:19 PM

Congress issues subpoenas to alleged 'pretexters'

By
Greg Sandoval
Topics
Politics

Five investigators accused of obtaining information through false pretenses known as pretexting have been subpoenaed to testify at a hearing Thursday before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The subpoenas were issued in connection with the congressional investigation into Hewlett-Packard's controversial leak hunt, according to a statement from the committee.

The five investigators called to testify are Bryan Wagner of Littleton, Colo.; Charles Kelly from the CAS Agency in Villa Rica, Ga.; Cassandra Selvage of Eye in the Sky Investigations in Dade City, Fla.; Darren Brost of Austin, Texas; and Valerie Preston of InSearchOf Inc. in Cooper City, Fla.

Wagner works for the Florida-based detective agency Action Research Group, according to James Rapp, who served jail time for improperly obtaining private records and claims to be Wagner's uncle.

Wagner has not returned repeated phone calls from CNET News.com.

A pretexter is typically someone who misleads employees of a business or organization, such as a bank or hospital, to trick them into divulging private data.

California's attorney general has said this kind of information gathering is illegal. Congress has been examining pretexting for more than seven months.


  • Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. Based in New York, Sandoval is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

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