Richard Thomas, the British Information Commissioner, has concluded in his report for Parliament that the means used by a private detective were probably illicit in more than 11,000 of the assignments.

This information was the result of a police raid named Operation Motorman, on a private detective’s home which showed that in three years the detective had been hired by 305 journalists to carry out 13,343 separate inquiries at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

One paper alone paid the detective £26,000 (about $50k). It also appears that the Commissioner will now expose the names of all the newspaper clients. More can be read on this topic by clicking here.