Jackson Jet Spy Sentenced

Thu., Oct. 5, 2006 2:15 PM PDT by Josh Grossberg

Who's bad? That's an easy one.

Jeffrey Borer, former owner of a charter jet company, was sentenced Wednesday to six months of home detention and placed on three years' probation for conspiring to spy on Michael Jackson and former attorney Mark Geragos in November 2003 when the erstwhile King of Pop flew from Las Vegas to Santa Barbara to surrender on child-molestation charges.

U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz also fined Borer $10,000 and ordered him to complete 150 hours of community service. Borer, 60, could have gotten up to five years in the slammer, but the judge decided on leniency, pointing to the seriousness of his wife's health problems.

However, the judge did raise Borer's fine from the $5,000 requested by the U.S. Attorney's office to $10,000, citing the severity of the breach of Jackson's privacy and a violation of his attorney-client privilege.

"There has to be some bite to what you did," Matz said, per Los Angeles' City News Service.

Borer and codefendant Arvel Jett Reeves struck aplea bargain in March in which the two men admit in federal court to secretly planting two mini-video cameras aboard Jackson's chartered Gulfstream jet, per the plea agreement, "to sell the recordings to the media for a large sum of money."

The flight kicked off to a two-year legal thriller that eventually ended in the "Smooth Criminal" singer's acquittal. Borer and Reeves' plan was bungled as Reeves failed to install the microphones correctly and the men wound up with just video of Jackson and Geragos.

In exchange to pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy each, prosecutors agreed to drop two other charges--witness tampering and endeavoring to intercept oral communication.

Reeves, whose company, Executive Aviation Linguistics, serviced Jackson's jet, was sentenced in July to eight months in prison followed by six months in a halfway house, and fined $1,000.

Borer's charter company, Xtrajet, has since folded.

After Wednesday's hearing, Borer's lawyer, Stanley Stone, told reporters that he thought the punishment was "very fair" in light of the crime and his client's family situation.

No comment from the Gloved One's camp.

Jackson is reportedly holed up in Ireland to plot his latest comeback attempt.

The Moonwalker is planning to release Visionary--The Video Singles, a set of 20 hit singles from his solo career from his Off the Wall days to 1997's Blood on the Dance Floor remix album, according to Billboard.

Meanwhile, Jackson's publicist announced last week that the "Thriller" purveyor was no longer involved in Two Seas Records, a label he had cofounded five months ago with Bahrain royal family members, and may release his next studio album on his own label.

Borer's sentencing is latest Jackson-relates legal news to come down the pike in the past week. Last Friday, attorneys for Jackson and ex-wife Debbie Rowe announced a settlement in their ongoing custody battle involving their two children. Terms of that agreement were not disclosed.