Fired Philly TV anchor admits e-mail hacking
PHILADELPHIA -- A fired TV newscaster admitted Friday that he hacked into his co-anchor's e-mail accounts, pleading guilty to one count of illegally accessing a computer.
Larry Mendte admitted that he viewed hundreds of Alycia Lane's e-mails from March 2006 to May 2008, including ones from her agent, her then-husband and lawyers representing her after she was arrested in New York last year and fired from the station.
"There is no question he wrecked her career," said lawyer Paul Rosen, who represents Lane in her wrongful-termination suit against KYW-TV.
Mendte, 51, who once worked at Chicago's WBBM-TV, earned about $700,000 a year at the station. Rosen believes he became jealous of his younger co-anchor in early 2006 as her salary climbed to about $780,000. He bought a keystroke-logging device to get her passwords in August 2006, and intercepted e-mails from Lane's two personal and one work account, prosecutors said.
From January to May of this year, Mendte read Lane's e-mail 537 times, the FBI said.
Mendte and Lane co-anchored evening broadcasts together for four years at KYW-TV, the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia, until Lane's arrest in December after an alleged scuffle with New York police.
Mendte, 51, was fired in June after FBI agents searched his home and seized his computer. His attorney, Michael Schwartz, has said Mendte cooperated from the start.
Mendte faces a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison but is likely to get much less under federal guidelines when he is sentenced Nov. 24. Prosecutors have agreed not to recommend any sentence.
As the twice-divorced Lane's personal life became tabloid fodder, she complained to the station that her work e-mails were getting passed around, Rosen said.
"They treated her as if she was paranoid," he said.
Mendte declined to comment after his plea.
The allegations are the latest embarrassment for the station, which had been making gains with the Mendte-Lane duo against longtime news leader WPVI-TV, the ABC affiliate.
According to the criminal information filed in July, Mendte relayed details about Lane's criminal case and other information to a Philadelphia Daily News reporter.
Lane is suing the station over her dismissal, which the station said was necessary because she had become the subject of several news stories.
New York prosecutors in February downgraded felony charges that Lane struck the officer. A judge pledged to drop the remaining charges in August if she is not arrested again.
Mendte, who is married to local Fox news anchor Dawn Stensland, joined the station in July 2003 after several years at the local NBC affiliate. He previously co-hosted "Access Hollywood" and worked at stations in Chicago, San Diego and New York.