Woman sentenced in wiretap case

February 23, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former phone-company worker convicted of lying to authorities about a Hollywood wiretapping scandal involving former private eye Anthony Pellicano was sentenced Monday to nearly 31‚Ñ2 years in federal prison.

Joann Wiggan, 56, of Burbank was given 41 months in prison and two years of supervised release. She also was fined $7,500.

Wiggan was convicted of two counts of perjury and one count of making a false statement. She could have faced up to 15 years in prison.

Wiggan “engaged for years in the calculated obstruction and perversion of the court process,” U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fisher said at her sentencing.

A call to Wiggan’s attorney, David Robert Reed, seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Prosecutors said Wiggan was a facilities technician at SBC who had access to mainframe computers at the central office in 2002.

They argued that she wired connections that allowed Pellicano to illegally wiretap people such as Sylvester Stallone while working for well-heeled clients in lawsuits, divorce cases and business disputes.

“You create, basically, an unknown extension to that phone,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel A. Saunders said. “Unless you’re specifically looking for it, you’d never find it.”

Wiggan did not make a statement while being sentenced.

Prosecutors didn’t file wiretapping charges against her because of the statute of limitations and questions of reasonable doubt. Instead, they charged her with lying to investigators.