WME Agents Phone Hacked By News Corp

EXCLUSIVE: I’ve learned that Scotland Yard has informed Hollywood musicagent Julie Colbert that her cell phone calls were intercepted because she represented Welsh pop star Charlotte Church.The WME tenpercenter who works for music clients in film and television was back and forth between Los Angeles and London when the hacking occurred, my insiders say. That’s because, at the time, Church was working closely with the crossover agent and even staying as a guest in Colbert’s home for several months to get away from the paparazzi constantly trailing the singing sensation.”Scotland Yard told Julie, ‘Your number came up as one of the ones that was hacked,” an insider tells me. I understand that Colbert hasn’t decided yet whether to file a claim because of the hacking. That might provetouchy because her agency William Morris Endeavor Entertainment does a lot of business with News Corp subsidiaries like Fox Broadcasting, Twentieth Fox TV, and the Fox Filmed Entertainment Group. No information was provided Colbertexactly who did the hacking: News Corp’s journalists or private detectives.But Bloomberg reported earlier today that Glenn Mulcaire, the former News Corp private detective who hacked phones for the company’sNews Of TheWorld, hadan unidentifiedWME agent’snumbersas well as Charlotte ChurchsNY publicist Kevin Chiaramonte of Paul Freundlich Associates among thousands of pages ofnotes seized by police. That agent, I’ve learned, was Colbert. Church told an officially UK inquiry into press ethics in November that the evidence includes many pages of names, numbers, notes, addresses, pin numbers and the fact that my mother and I were each a project. Churchsang atNews Corp ChairmanRupert Murdochs wedding in 1999 when she was 13 years old. Now 26, she settled a lawsuit this week against Murdoch’s companydaysbefore the first trial over the phone-hacking scandal was scheduled to start.Terms will be disclosed at a London court hearingnext week. Besides Church, recently Jude Law, Steve Coogan, and other high-profile showbiz figures have settled. News Corp still faces possible claims by more than 800likely victims identified by police. The presence of the U.S. phone numbers in Mulcaires notes may interest U.S. prosecutors and alsomay complicate News Corpeffortsto contain lawsuits to the UK. Meanwhile, News Corp is launching a new Sunday edition of The Sun to replace the News Of The World which was shuttered because of the scandal.