Was David Ortiz the hacker in HP board scandal?

The strange events surrounding an HP board scandal in which board members were apparently illegally spied upon took another bizarre twist today as it was revealed that someone using the email account redsox9855@yahoo.com apparently hacked the phone records of board member and VC legend Thomas Perkins. Say it ain't so, Ortiz!

 Here's a bit of background: During the stormy tenure of former CEO Carly Fiorina, there were news leaks emanating from the board room. To find out the source of the leaks, HP's head lawyers turned to a private investigators, who in turn subcontracted the job out to another private investigator.

Now things get sticky. Apparently, that investigator hacked the phone records of board members, and traced to whom they made calls. He did it by posing as the board members themselves by using their social security numbers and contacting their phone providers to get the records, using a technique called "pretexting." He then turned over the info to HP lawyers. One board member resigned, another was asked to resign and refused...and at the moment the whole issue is in the hands of law enforcment folks, who may bring down the legal hammer because of the hacking.

Perkins resigned when he found out about the phone record hacking. But he didn't stop there. He found out his phone records had been hacked, and that someone had set up an account to read them, posing as him.

AT&T told him that the person who did the hacking had the email account redsox9855@yahoo.com, according to the New York Times.

Now, I'm obviously not really suggesting Red Sox slugger David Ortiz did the hacking; he may be the best clutch hitter in baseball, but I'm not sure about his prowess behind the keyboard.

But clearly, a Red Sox fan was involved. What misguided efforts! If only he had put his energies into hacking the Yankee front office, maybe the Sox could have found out about their trading plans ahead of the trading deadline, and the Sox would now be eight games in front of the Yankees, instead of floundering around with the dregs of the division.

The person doing the hacking was unethical, and potentially breaking the law as well. But heck, he was a Red Sox fan. And speaking as a member of the same long-suffering brotherhood, that means he can't be all bad.

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