Testimony at a Washington state hearing revealed that HP has been routinely picking up travel expenses for California police to search companies which compete with HP to sell servers including HP 3000s. The Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force, a group of California police, had its expenses paid for a trip to Redmond, Wash. in 1998 to search for stolen equipment and software at US Computer Corp., a broker selling HP 3000 systems, memory boards and peripherals. A King County municipal court hearing on June 2 ran into so much detail about the 1998 search that the judge had to continue the hearing to June 16. (See our May lawsuit story for more details of conduct during the search.) According to a story in the Seattle Times, supervisor Mike Tsuchida of the task force said the raid wouldn’t have happened without HP’s payment of travel expenses for the California police and its own special security officer, Tim O’Neill. Tsuchida admitted in court that he and others in the task force illegally tape-recorded US Computer employees during the search according to the Times story. US Computer is seeking the return of documents and computers seized during the search by the Task Force. Meanwhile, a California trial scheduled to begin at the end of June of Hardwarehouse founder Richard Adamson saw bad news delivered for the defendant. Adamson is accused of stealing the HP SS_CONFIG software while running his systems brokerage, then using it to illegally transform HP 9000 systems into HP 3000s. Federal judge Garland Burrell ruled that the defendants could not present information linking the HP financing of the California police force in the upcoming Adamson trial. An earlier ruling had given Adamson’s lawyers permission to introduce evidence of a financial link between HP and the Task Force.