Prison Term Sought for Private Eye Who Hacked Email - 2015-06-25

In the end, the amount of money a New York private investigator made from people who paid him to illegally pilfer the emails of possibly dozens of people he was investigating was small — just $5,000.
But the privacy violation was so great that federal prosecutors are asking a judge on Friday to sentence the investigator, Eric Saldarriaga, 41, to serve as much as six months in prison to send a stern message about the wrongness of illegal hacking.
At least one of the people who had their email accounts hacked by Mr. Saldarriaga was a journalist who has written articles about the Church of Scientology and suspects that the investigator was hired to look into his work, according to a letter from the victim that prosecutors filed with the court on Thursday.