Detective agency 'run on dishonesty'

Hundreds of telephone calls were intercepted and people's conversations secretly recorded.

Personal banking information and "targeted" computer hacking was also on offer to customers with deep enough pockets.

So too was confidential medical data, London's Southwark Crown Court was told.

Lawbreaking customers included Sunday Times Rich List tycoon Adrian Kirby, whose industrial waste company was in dispute with both local councils and residents over alleged illegal dumping.

The businessman, who is reported to be worth £65 million and at the time headed Atlantic Waste Holdings, paid £47,000 for telephone taps on an Environment Agency officer and one of the company's former site managers, who was suspected of helping investigate the company's activities.

Another job taken on by the London-based agency, which cannot be named for legal reasons, was an acrimonious divorce case.

Prestige bathroom company boss Anthony Waters paid them £50,000 to "spy" on his estranged wife with the help of special software to monitor everything she typed onto her laptop about the divorce proceedings and her finances.

In a third example, a Strathclyde woman asked the agency to monitor the phone calls of someone she believed had killed one of her elderly relatives to pocket a large inheritance.

The court was told because of her "good intentions" to pass any information she obtained to the police, she escaped with a caution.

In the dock are Kirby, 47, from Haslemere, Sussex; West 1 Bathroom chief Waters, 65, who lives in Mougins, France; his son Duncan, 38, from Horstead, Sussex, and one of his former directors, Stephen Farrington, 60, from Redhill, Surrey.

Also before the court are the detective agency's "telephone interception specialists" Michael Hall, 35, of Battersea, London, and Stuart Dowling, 30, from Sittingbourne, Kent, who made some of the telephone monitoring devices, and two more of the company's clients, Adam Share, 35, of Corby Glen, Lincolnshire, and Charles Kay, 58, from Henley, Oxfordshire.

They variously admitted intercepting illegal communications and making unauthorised modifications to a computer.

Miranda Moore, prosecuting, told the court the agency's downfall began when it was discovered that a serving police officer, supposedly off sick with depression, was effectively working for them full-time.

"From that initial inquiry matters turned to British Telecom, who by 2003 had become aware that throughout the UK they were finding a number of local intercepts on landlines which shared common features."

She said they included various hi-tech monitoring devices in the familiar green roadside telephone junction boxes, as well as the use of private lines to "piggyback" re-routed calls.

"BT took the view if it was not the work of one person then one team was responsible," said counsel.

To discover the culprits tiny cameras were installed in the cabinets and fitted to nearby telegraph poles.

It did not take long for Hall to be identified. The serving police officer was also put under surveillance as he met various people to arrange telephone intercepts.

When various premises were searched a "vast amount" of incriminating material was recovered which immediately pointed to the agency's involvement.

Further inquiries in the examination of the company's emails revealed in addition to the "normal services of a detective agency - such as locating missing people and process serving - they also provided less legitimate services", Ms Moore explained.

"They would obtain itemised telephone billing for £750 a month, personal banking information of individuals for about £2,000, hack into a target computer at £5,000 per address and monitor a person's telephone for £3,000.

"They also offered the service of obtaining confidential medical records for between £350-£500 per person.

"There is no doubt the detective agency's office was run on a backbone of dishonesty," said the barrister.