Phone hacking: Former Sunday Mirror journalist Graham Johnson admits to intercepting voicemails

He used the illegal technique to investigate a relationship between a soap star and a gangster

Former Sunday Mirror journalist Graham Johnson, 46, leaves Westminster Magistrates' Court, north west London, where he pleaded guilty to phone hacking after voluntarily coming forward to confess to police. (Nick Ansell/PA Wire )

A former Sunday Mirror journalist has admitted to phone hacking, making him the first Mirror Group Newspapers reporter to admit to the crime.

Graham Johnson, 46, worked at the Sunday Mirror between 1997 and 2005, and last year voluntarily told police that he had hacked a phone in autumn 2001 to investigate whether a soap star was having an affair with a gangster.

After journalists for Mirror Group Newspapers were arrested in March 2013, Johnson confessed that he had used the technique in a “short and intense” period which lasted three to seven days, during which he listened to between 10 and 13 messages.

Today, Johnson pleaded guilty to phone hacking at Westminster Magistrates Court.

The court heard that Johnson had been “shown by a senior person in a supervisory capacity how to access voicemails” and was not aware that it was a crime at the time.

The subsequent story was published in the Sunday Mirror.

Defence solicitor Avtar Bhatoa said his client stopped phone hacking after less than a week “because he did not feel it was right“

He added that when arrests were made 12 years later, he contacted the police the next day. Prosecutor Luke Dockwray stressed that Johnson was not under investigation when he contacted police.

District Judge Quentin Purdy told the court that Johnson deserved “great credit” for “voluntarily throwing [himself] at the mercy of the system.”

"However, it was a grave intrusion into other people's business. Indeed, the history of recent years has shown how serious this kind of intrusion can be," he added.

Johnson, who is originally from Liverpool and now lives in London, was investigations editor at the Sunday Mirror for six years, after working at the now defunct News of the World from 1995 to 1997.

He has also had his work published by the Observer, Vice, The Guardian and The Liverpool Echo, with no suggestion that he did anything illegal for those outlets.

Johnson declined to comment as he left court, saying his defence solicitor had advised him not to. He now faces sentencing at the Old Bailey on 27 November.

His court appearance comes after the Mirror Group Newspapers admitted that illegal voicemail interceptions had occurred in its newsrooms and that compensation would be paid to 10 victims. MGN had previously denied all hacking allegations for almost three years.