Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has agreed to pay $14.5 million in a settlement with the California attorney general to settle the case over the company's use of private detectives to obtain phone records of board members and journalists.
In this NYTimes.com article it is reported that $650,000 will go towards fines for "statutory damages" but the bulk of the money, $13.5 million will go to create a state-administered fund to finance the investigation of privacy violations. The remainder will cover the attorney general's expenses in its investigation of the corporate spying case.
Believe it or not but the fine works out to be about what the company makes every 83 minutes. Their revenue was reported as $91.7 billion this fiscal year.
This settlement might put the company's problems with the state at rest but they still face investigations by the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.
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