Now Ramsay’s father-in-law is facing prison
He admits hacking computer 2,000 times to dig up dirt on the TV chef
GORdON Ramsay’s fatherin- law and his two sons could face jail after admitting hacking into the chef’s emails almost 2,000 times to dig up dirt on him.
Chris Hutcheson, 68, set up a secret spy ring, breaking into Ramsay’s personal files to get back at him after being thrown out of the TV chef’s lucrative business empire.
Ramsay, 50, once famously boasted that he and his father-in-law were inseparable and he appointed him chief executive of his empire.
For 12 years, the pair ran his booming restaurant business side by side, playing squash and even running marathons together.
But their relationship soured in 2010 when simmering tensions over missing money and serial womanising led to Hutcheson being sacked from the business, sparking a bitter family feud lasting seven years.
Yesterday Hutcheson and Ramsay’s brothers-in-law, Adam Hutcheson, 46, and Chris Hutcheson, 37, admitted rifling through the star’s password- protected accounts, searching emails and company computer systems. All three pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to a charge of conspiring to unlawfully access the computer system of Gordon Ramsay Holdings Ltd and email accounts of its employees.
Their shock pleas came after a series of explosive civil court battles laying bare the lengths to which Hutcheson and his sons were prepared to go to spy on their famous in-law. Now all three face up to two years in prison when they are sentenced in June after Judge Gerald Gordon said ‘all options’ were open.
The extraordinary case was brought following a toxic High Court battle back in 2011 when Ramsay accused his one-time mentor of hacking into his personal and company files thousands of times and plundering £1.42million from the company to fund a double life with a secret second ‘wife’ and family.
He claimed Hutcheson had used company funds to pay his mistress £ 5,000 a month for doing nothing, had put his wife and son Adam on the payroll and wrote £20,000 cheques to himself at a time when the firm was in dire financial straits. The previously close pair went on to trade insults publicly. Ramsay’s wife of 21 years, Tana sided with her husband and severed ties with her parents after discovering her philandering father had kept a second family secret from her for 30 years after fathering two children by one of his mistresses, Frances Collins.
After sacking him and other family members working for the firm in October 2010, Ramsay brought in a team of specialists to forensically trawl through company records. They found
stolen passwords had been used to access Ramsay’s files using a computer in the basement of the company’s Westminster headquarters, from where socalled ‘key logger’ software was launched to record passwords as they were being typed.
Accessed emails included ones entitled ‘Daily cashflow’, ‘Daily takings’, and ‘Extremely urgent, personal and confidential’. Prosecutors believe Hutcheson suspected Ramsay had leaked a photo of his mistress Sara Stewart as he hacked into an email called ‘Sara Stewart: Defence’.
In 2012 the pair reached a £2million truce after settling the High Court claim ending their very public slanging match.
But the matter was then reported to Scotland Yard to investigate whether there had been any criminal wrongdoing. Detectives were passed emails revealing how Hutcheson and his son Adam openly chatted about how to ‘crack codes’. In an earlier hearing, Prosecutor Dan Suter said police had spent years dealing with a ‘ convoluted, voluminous case.’
Yesterday prosecutors accepted the guilty plea of Hutcheson, who lives in France, and offered no evidence against Hutcheson’s daughter Orlanda Butland, 45, who was facing the same charges.
The judge directed a not guilty verdict to be entered in her case. Hutcheson’s eldest son Adam, a wind turbine company director from Kent, and Chris Hutcheson Jnr, of Hertfordshire, who runs a computer services company, also admitted conspiring to unlawfully access a computer.
All three were released on bail ahead of sentencing on June 2. Neither Ramsay nor his wife were in court. Ramsay’s spokesman declined to comment.