Mirror editor busted in phone-hacking scandal

A top editor of the Daily and Sunday Mirror newspapers in London was arrested on Wednesday — the fifth Mirror journalist taken into custody in connection with a “widespread and frequent” phone-hacking scandal, according to reports.

Lee Harpin, who has worked at the company since 2006, was taken from the newspaper offices, and his computer was confiscated.

The company in May agreed to pay about $1.9 million in a civil trial stemming from a suit by eight people who claimed they were victims of phone hacking on a “mass industrial scale.”

A spokeswoman for Trinity Mirror, which owns the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and The People, would not confirm the identity of the editor arrested.

The four journalists who were arrested two years ago have yet to be formally charged and are free on bail. The probe into the Daily Mirror phone hacking has been dubbed Operation Golding by the London police.

Trinity Mirror has acknowledged that it hacked phones extensively. While admitting liability, Trinity Mirror is appealing the amount of the May award as “unfair.”

The eight plaintiffs who received the $1.9 million in damages in May were celebrities, with British actress Sadie Frost — who was married to Jude Law in 1997 but divorced the Oscar-nominated actor in 2003 — receiving the largest award, $406,876.