Former FBI Agent: Jamie Spears Surveilled Britney Spears Bedroom, spied on her
A former FBI agent corroborated a claim that Britney Spears’father spied on the pop star for years while acting as her conservator.
Sherine Ebadi, who worked on fraud and corruption cases for
over 10 years at the federal agency, claimed in a declaration filed Friday in
Los Angeles, that Jamie Spears “engaged in and directed others to engage in
unconscionable violations of [Britney’s] privacy and civil liberties.”
Ebadi alleged in the filing that her findings “raise
criminal implications” for Jamie, who oversaw his daughter’s personal, medical
and financial affairs for the bulk of her nearly 14-year conservatorship before
a judge terminated it in November 2021.
Britney’s attorney, Mathew Rosengart, submitted Ebadi’s
declaration as part of a larger court filing accusing Jamie, 69, of taking more
than $6 million from the 40-year-old “Toxic” singer’s estate and using “his
role as conservator to further his own personal and business interests.”
Rosengart had retained Ebadi, who now works as an associate
managing director in the Forensic Investigations and Intelligence practice of
Kroll Associates Inc., to investigate Jamie’s management of the
conservatorship.
Ebadi’s declaration said she “personally debriefed and
interviewed” Alex Vlasov, the whistleblower who alleged in the New York Times
documentary “Controlling Britney Spears” in September that Jamie had monitored
Britney’s cellphone and bugged her bedroom, and concluded that he was a “highly
credible” witness.
Vlasov, who worked for Britney’s former bodyguard Edan
Yemini, told Ebadi that his employer, Black Box Security, “was already monitoring”
the Grammy winner’s BlackBerry in 2012 when he started working there. Vlasov
claimed that when Britney switched to an iPhone the following year, he was
entrusted with “finding monitoring software and installing it as a hidden app,”
according to the declaration.
“Mr. Vlasov was tasked with reviewing the monitored content
and relaying that information through Yemini to [Jamie],” Ebadi said.
“Sometimes, Mr. Vlasov provided information on [Britney’s] monitored
communications directly to [Jamie].”
By 2015, Jamie allegedly instructed Black Box “to mirror the
content of [Britney’s] iCloud to a separate device that could be reviewed” at
the suggestion of Robin Greenhill, an associate of Britney’s then-business
manager, Lou Taylor, per the filing.
“According to Mr. Vlasov, Black Box sent [Britney’s]
personal communications to [Jamie] at his explicit request,” Ebadi said,
alleging in the declaration that Jamie “would on occasion” ask to see his
daughter’s “therapy notes or text messages” — even after he stepped down as the
conservator of her person in September 2019.
Ebadi said Vlasov also alleged that Jamie was “particularly
interested in his daughter’s attorney-client communications and wanted regular
updates from Black Box on the substance of those privileged messages.” Vlasov
claimed his employer did not ask him to stop reviewing such communications
until 2020.
Ebadi, who was on former special counsel Robert Mueller’s
team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, said
in her declaration that she also “corroborated” Vlasov’s bugging claim based on
their meeting, though she did not specify whether Vlasov had provided physical
evidence.
According to Mr. Vlasov, Black Box was initially responsible
for suggesting that a secret listening device be planted in [Britney’s]
bedroom, but [Jamie] ‘loved’ the idea and approved and instructed that the
installation move forward,” she claimed.
“The Black Box employee who placed the secret device in
[Britney’s] bedroom explained to Mr. Vlasov that he did so by duct-taping it
behind furniture so it could not be seen and that he added a separate battery
pack to the recording device to permit continuous recording for a longer period
of time.”
Vlasov alleged to Ebadi that there were “hundreds of hours
of audio recording” between 2016 and 2018, including conversations between
Britney and her then-boyfriend as well as her teenage sons, Sean Preston and
Jayden James.
Jamie’s attorney, Alex Weingarten, did not immediately
respond to Page Six’s request for comment on Ebadi’s declaration, but his
former lawyer, Vivian Lee Thoreen, said in a statement in September that his
“actions were done with the knowledge and consent of Britney, her
court-appointed attorney [Samuel D. Ingham III] and/or the court.”
A lawyer for Yemini, meanwhile, said at the time, “Black Box
have always conducted themselves within professional, ethical and legal bounds,
and they are particularly proud of their work in keeping Ms. Spears safe for
many years.”
Britney testified last summer that she wanted her estranged
dad to be charged with “conservatorship abuse.”
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