Gordon Ramsay’s father-in-law jailed for hacking celebrity chef’s computer
Written by News on 08/06/2017
Gordon Ramsay’s father-in-law has been jailed for six months for hacking the celebrity chef’s computer during an almost decade-long bitter feud.
Chris Hutcheson 69, the father of Ramsay’s wife, Tana, conspired with his sons Adam, 47, and Chris Jr, 37, to access Ramsay’s company device to access financial information and other data from his emails.
As he was taken away to begin his sentence, Hutcheson Sr kissed his sons, who were sentenced to four months each suspended for two years.
In April, Hutcheson admitted conspiring with his sons, who both had IT roles in Gordon Ramsay Holdings Ltd, to access the firm’s systems almost 2,000 times between October 2010, when Hutcheson Sr was sacked as the company’s chief executive, and March 2011.
The court heard, on one day alone in February 2011, he accessed the system 600 times and Adam Hutcheson did it 282 times.
The trio were seeking details of Ramsay’s intellectual property rights and other material which might give them the upper hand in a legal dispute with Ramsay.
Some of the information the Hutchesons obtained ended up in newspapers, including a revelation that the chef had had a hair transplant.
After their actions were discovered, Hutcheson Snr told his son Chris in an email: "Guess we have been rumbled. Bit late though."
Prosecutor Julian Christopher QC told the court that the families had since reconciled and as a result neither Gordon nor Tana supported the criminal prosecution. Neither was in court for sentencing.
The prosecution had earlier dropped its case against another of Hutcheson’s children, Orlanda Butland, 45, who had denied the same charges.
(c) Sky News 2017: Gordon Ramsay’s father-in-law jailed for hacking celebrity chef’s computer
