Anthony Pellicano, the celebrity private eye whose corruption trial has gripped Hollywood for much of the year, has been jailed for 15 years.

Pellicano, whose clients included Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson and senior Hollywood executives, was accused of bugging the phones of Sylvester Stallone among other celebrities, and paying off Los Angeles police officers to gain access to the police records of his targets.

He specialised in searching for dirty secrets so that his clients could use blackmail to gain a tactical advantage in court cases, prosecutors said.

He was also accused of inventing his own telephone wiretapping software, known as Telesleuth.

Sentencing the 64-year-old, who was found guilty on 78 charges at a trial in May, Judge Dale Fischer said that he had engaged in "reprehensible conduct for many years - eagerly, maliciously and with great pride."

His conduct had "caused loss of confidence in government agencies" and "physical, psychological and emotional distress to his victims".

Among the victims on whom he used heavy handed intimidation tactics, Anita Busch, a former Los Angeles Times journalist who had written unflattering articles about the Disney president Michael Ovitz, described how she found a dead fish with a red rose in its mouth along with a note that read simply "Stop."

"I was afraid to turn on the engine of my car for fear it would blow up," said Ms Busch. "It was death by a thousand cuts – and they were deep and hard."

Pellicano and Alexander Proctor, who prosecutors said was hired by the private eye, are awaiting a separate trial on charges of conspiracy and making criminal threats in Ms Busch's case.

Mr Proctor, 65, is serving a 10-year sentence on unrelated drug charges in a Georgia prison.

Pellicano's arrest prompted intense speculation within the entertainment world about what the private eye's trial might bring to light.

But although prominent clients Paramount studio chief Brad Grey and Mr Ovitz were called to appear at the trial in May, there were few revelations. Neither man was charged with wrongdoing and both maintained they didn’t know about Pellicano’s tactics.

Pellicano acted as his own lawyer and called only one witness, keeping his promise that he wouldn’t give up information about his clients to save himself.

He was first arrested in 2002 after a probe involving action star Steven Seagal, one of his former clients. A search of his offices discovered two grenades and a quantity of plastic explosive.

He served a 30-month prison sentence for weapons offences before being indicted for racketeering and conspiracy.

Today Judge Fischer ordered former Los Angeles police Sergeant Mark Arneson and ex-telephone company employee Ray Turner, who were also convicted in May along with two other co-defendants, to pay compensation for accessing confidential information for Pellicano. They will be sentenced on January 29.

In another trial, Pellicano was found guilty along with entertainment lawyer Terry Christensen of charges linked to phonetapping the former wife of billionaire MGM mogul Kirk Kerkorian during a child support battle.

The pair bugged her conversations to disprove her claims that Mr Kerkorian was the father of her young daughter. DNA tests later showed that the biological father was the movie producer Steve Bing, who also fathered Liz Hurley's baby.

Christensen was sentenced last month to three years in prison.

Pellicano is now facing numerous civil law suits, seeking unspecified damages and claiming his activities amounted to invasion of privacy, negligence and infliction of emotional distress.

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