Gordon Ramsay’s father-in-law has been sentenced to six months in prison, having pleaded guilty to hacking company computers to steal confidential information as part of a dispute with the famous chef.

68 year old Chris Hutcheson – the father of Ramsay’s wife Tana – worked with his sons Adam Hutcheson (46) and Chris Hutcheson Jr. (37) to infiltrate the celebrity chef’s e-mails to prise out confidential financial information and more, some of which was passed on to the News of the World.

Hutcheson himself received a six month jail term, while the two younger men were given four-month sentences suspended for two years.

Gordon RamsayGordon Ramsay's father-in-law has been sentenced to jail for six months

Handing down the sentence at the Old Bailey on Wednesday (June 7th), Judge John Bevan QC said: “The whole episode of five months amounts to an unattractive and unedifying example of dirty linen being washed in public.”

The public dispute began in 2010 when Chris Hutcheson was sacked from his role as the chief executive of Gordon Ramsay Holdings Ltd. He proceeded to conspire with his sons, who both had IT roles in the business, to access systems almost 2,000 times between October 2010 and March 2011.

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The information they gleaned included sensitive data regarding Gordon Ramsay’s intellectual property rights in an attempt “to obtain material that might embarrass Mr Ramsay or be useful in the ongoing dispute with him”, according to prosecutor Julian Christopher QC.

Stories about a hair transplant and a fishing junket, among many others, then soon appeared in the media as the Hutchesons attempted to discredit Ramsay.

The three of them admitted conspiring to cause a computer to access programs and data without authority at a court hearing back in April this year.

Neither Gordon Ramsay nor his wife Tana, who have been married since 1996 and have four children, were in court for the ruling. Since the civil case ended, prosecutor Christopher said that the families had reconciled and that the couple did not support the criminal prosecution.

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