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A former FBI special 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 court declaration filed Friday in Los Angeles and obtained by Page Six that Jamie Spears “engaged in and directed others to engage in unconscionable violations of [Britney’s] privacy and civil liberties.”
Ebadi said 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.
Ebadi said she “personally debriefed and interviewed” Alex Vlasov, the whistleblower who alleged in the 2021 New York Times documentary “Controlling Britney Spears” that Jamie, 69, 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, 40, switched to an iPhone the following year, he was tasked 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 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 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 said 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.
“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 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 2021 statement that his “actions were done with the knowledge and consent of Britney, her court-appointed attorney and/or the court.”
A lawyer for Yemini, meanwhile, previously said, “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’s attorney, Mathew Rosengart, submitted Ebadi’s declaration as part of a larger court filing accusing Jamie of taking more than $6 million from the “Toxic” singer’s estate and using “his role as conservator to further his own personal and business interests.”
Britney testified last summer that she wanted her estranged dad to be charged with “conservatorship abuse.”
Various conservatorship-related requests and legal fees are set to be discussed at a court hearing Wednesday afternoon.
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