The Hamilton County sheriff's department appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Gallagher's alleged theft, because the elected district attorney had ties to Chiquita owner Carl Lindner Jr. (who previously owned the "Enquirer"). On September 24, 1998, Gallagher pleaded guilty to two felony counts of unlawfully tapping into Chiquita's voicemail. His two-and-a-half-year prison sentence was reduced to five years of probation and 200 hours of community service after he named George Ventura, a former Chiquita lawyer, as the Chiquita insider who gave Gallagher access to the voicemail system. In a 2008 article in the "Columbia Journalism Review", McWhirter criticized Gallagher for waiving his reporter's privilege afforded under state shield law and divulging his sources in order to receive a more lenient sentence.