TV News Presenter Accused of Hacking an E-mail Account

Larry Mendte, who used to work as a news presenter for a Philadelphia TV station, somehow managed to gain access to the e-mail of his co-presenter, Alycia Lane. The information he had access to for a period in excess of two years was later on leaked to abloids and resulted in Lane's downfall. Since the start of this year and until the month of May, Mendte fraudulently accessed the e-mail account 537 times. The former newscaster is now under federal investigation and risks spending up to six months in jail if he is found guilty in a court of law.

Here is what U.S. attorney Laurie Magid comments on the case, "The mere accessing and reading of privileged information is criminal. This case, however, went well beyond just reading someone's e-mail. It's no different than someone stealing your locked briefcase, containing information from your lawyer, prying it open and helping themselves to the contents".

At the TV station in question, which is called KYW-TV and is an affiliate of CBS, Larry Mendte and Alycia Lane worked together over a period of four years, until this January. Mendte, aged 51, stopped working at the end of June, the current year, after the fact that the FBI was investigating him come to light. His last time on air was on the 29th of May.

Why would the aging newscaster resort to such actions? The reason seems to be envy. Mendte could not handle the fact that he was earning about $680,000 per year, about $100,000 less than his beautiful co-presenter. According to Paul Rosen, Lane's attorney, the fact that her career was going the right way determined Mendte to undermine her. Perhaps he would not have been able to hack her account if she had followed our advice on how to come up with a super strong password.

Michael Schwartz, legal council for Mendte, explains, "As we continually have said from day one, Larry has been cooperating fully with the investigators. He continues to cooperate and will accept full responsibility for his actions". Taking such a responsibility may very well get him a six-month incarceration sentence, according to the federal law.

KYW-TV had nothing to comment on the recent incident involving its former employee, but we can expect Lane to sue the TV station for "wrongful termination".