In Depth

5 Things About Corporate Investigations That Won't Change...

...As a Result of the Hewlett-Packard Pretexting Scandal

By Sarah D. Scalet

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Let's be clear here. Telephone records are a routine part of investigations, and no single law is going to

change that.

Company phone records, for instance, are routinely used for internal investigations, and no one blinks

an eye. Employees simply don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy about calls they make and

receive on company phone systems.

Likewise, phone records are also routinely used for investigations done by law enforcement, especially

after the passage of the USA Patriot Act. Sometimes records are obtained with subpoenas; other times

they're released as a courtesy. Large telecommunications companies even have staffs in charge of

responding to these requests for telephone and ISP records.

A law protecting private phone records would make it more difficult to obtain records outside of those

two circumstances. But no one thinks it will stop the practice. It'll just change how individuals weigh the

risks and possible rewards of accessing such records.

"I think the HP case will turn people away from phone records, but in a cheating spouse situation or

with a business partner gone bad, I think people are going to take that upon themselves to hunt around

for that information," the National Retail Federation's LaRocca says.

"There are always people out there who can get you any kind of information, anytime, anywhere, and if

you hire those people they'll get it for you," Wells Fargo's Wipprecht says. "The question is, do you really

want to know?"

Reality check: There are legitimate ways to obtain private phone records, and the illegitimate ways

won't disappear overnight.

Assumption #5 Companies will hire law firms, not investigations firms, so that

investigations are done by the book.

Investigative firms aren't the only ones hired to do investigations. There's a booming business right

now for law firms that do investigations—and that's not going to change.

"A lot of investigations that would have been handed out to a small investigative boutique will instead

go to a reputable law firm," predicts Lavinder of Security and Investigative Placement Consultants,

noting that this is a trend she's been observing for a while.

These are firms such as the New York City-based Debevoise & Plimpton, which did an internal

investigation into whether Merck executives knew about dangers of the arthritis drug Vioxx; and

WilmerHale, the firm based in Washington, D.C., that was recently in the news for its investigation into

how stock options were granted at UnitedHealth. Firms like these use different methods than

investigations firms.

"We have a lot of clients who turn to us to do investigations, but they're not going to go out and find

somebody's phone records," says one attorney who works on white-collar investigations for a large law

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