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Sysadmin Steals Almost 20,000 Pieces of Computer Equipment

Posted by samzenpus on from the was-that-wrong dept.

coondoggie writes "Now this is some serious computer theft. We're talking 19,709 pieces of stolen computer equipment from the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. The theft included everything from PCs and printer toner to hard drives, software and other office equipment amounting to over $120,000, according to court documents and published reports."

18 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. Old stuff? by owlstead · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It seems to me that he did clear out the archive of old and useless equipment. Think about it: 20K of stuff worth 120K in US dollars? That's an average of 6 dollars per item, and you can rest assured that it won't be the minimum that they are quoting. Also, how can you be missing 20K of equipment? Well, easy, since it was probably collecting dust anyway.

    But stealing is dangerous stuff, because you will upscale as long as you can get away with it. Once you've started it, it's more difficult to stop, since you've already taken the moral hurdle. And at some time someone is going to miss something, either because of bad luck or because the person taking the stuff is moving upwards.

    I've got an old passive AGP Matrox dual head card laying around the office. It would be a perfect fit for one of my older computers. But I won't take it, even though I'm sure it won't be used anymore. That said, the way companies handle old equipment could be considered criminal as well.

  2. Simple solution. Ask by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I got a very nice PC here. Did I buy it? No, it was surplus and going unused and gathering dust with old equipment. I had asked for the old equipment, a couple of xeon servers. They said, "sure, take it". I pointed out that this PC was in fact brand new, but it was surplus so if I just shut up about it it saved paperwork.

    The servers were refurbished and donated to a charity as their office servers and the surplus PC has been my desktop for over a year.

    If you never ask, the answer will always be no. On the whole, people are nice, if only you are nice to them. Would you deny someone a piece of old equipment if they asked nicely? Then why should someone deny it to you?

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

    1. Re:Simple solution. Ask by riggah · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you work in any sort of "corporate" environment asking usually won't work. I've watched companies destroy and throw away merchandise/equipment rather than give it to employees.

      So, sure, asking is the moral and ethical way to do it, but you may just be calling attention to the fact that they haven't thrown any of the old junk that's collecting dust.

      I'm not advocating theft, by the way, just pointing out that many companies would rather trash something than give it to an employee. That being said, my boss just gave me an iMac that they were going to get rid of!

    2. Re:Simple solution. Ask by wisty · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Or you can suggest to the PHB to give the old junk away to the employee of the month. Nothing motivates workers like getting first dibs rummaging through the trash!

    3. Re:Simple solution. Ask by C_L_Lk · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My old manager at my last place of employment was just like this "throw it in the dumpster" - surplus was all to go in the dumpster that was designated for hazardous/electronic waste and go to the scrap yard and be chopped up. Hundreds of monitors, CPU's, Cisco routers, hubs and switches, thousands upon thousands of feet of Cat5 cable, you name it.

      However, said manager also told us all "the lid on the dumpster isn't locked and what happens to its contents when I'm gone home is out of my control" *hint hint* - so most of the IT staff, myself included, were pretty careful in stacking things in the dumpster all nice and neat and organized into "waste" and "not waste" - then we'd pick through it after hours for our own take. The next morning we would generally let it slip to the rest of the staff "there's leftover goodies in the dumpster - check it after work tonight".

      I'm sure in the end we saved the company many 10's of thousands of $ in disposal fees as I believe we paid close to $0.50/pound for electronics disposal. ($20 for one CRT monitor)

    4. Re:Simple solution. Ask by boyfaceddog · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Its not that simple, at least not for my company.

      I have seventeen three old PCs, (PIIIs), sixteen (yes, sixteen) old DLT drives, twelve old G4 macs, seven Apple Cinema Displays with the ADC plugs, two server racks, and two firewire CD drives. This is on top of the boxes of old keyboards, mice, power cables, 10gb and 20gb drives, old software, old UPSs and three palettes of miscellaneous broken and stripped hardware. All of it, every last piece, needs to be accounted for by serial number or count, by myself and my supervisor, and then turned over to a licensed hazardous waste company. The HWC needs to supply me certificates that they received all of this stuff and that they, in turn, disposed of it properly.

      If my company agreed to give the working PCs to employees, what would it tell regulators? 'We're sure the employees disposed of the PC properly because they're such nice people'?

      --
      Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
    5. Re:Simple solution. Ask by BenEnglishAtHome · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've seen two examples of disposal that made perfect sense in their environments yet left me so frustrated that it beggars description.

      Many years ago at a government agency, where taking something out of the dumpster would get you fired and put in jail, we had a cleanout of old equipment. This was years overdue and there was *lots* of stuff. There had been some sort of foulup with our program to sell off or donate excess equipment, so everything was to go into the scrap dumpster. That dumpster was against an outside wall of the multi-story parking garage. So that no one would be tempted to retrieve anything from the dumpsters (Congress would have our heads on a platter if we gave something to an employee, even by routing through the dumpster), orders were given and all equipment was taken to the third story of the parking garage and dropped into the dumpster from there, smashing everything into uselessness. A gigantic, USD$30K line printer, new and still in the box (although it had been bought nearly a decade before) went over the wall. I nearly cried. I had worked with those printers for a long time and truly loved them for all their loud, clackety goodness and for the fact that they were as reliable as gravity. (Actually, that was why this machine was still in the box; it was bought to serve as a "hot spare" but none of the deployed equipment had ever failed.) The only good thing that came out of it was that I (and others) made so much noise over this waste that procedures were changed and good (or even just repairable) equipment is now given good homes with schools and charities. Nowadays, we have almost no scrap; everything is re-used by someone.

      Second example - I had occasion to spend some time at the HQ campus of a major computer manufacturer. They disposed of equipment by putting it on a pallet and dragging it into a hallway. The employees were allowed to take whatever they could carry by themselves. This was a techy crowd, so dead computers got their drives, memory, video cards, etc. pulled. It was like one of those time-lapse shots on the Discovery channel of a swarm of ants disposing of some road kill. Pretty soon, there was just bones. The little left on the pallet was then recycled.

      What was frustrating about that? I didn't work there, so I couldn't have any of the goodies. :-)

  3. Re:Impressive... most impressive... or not... by rnaiguy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Perhaps the stuff is being undervalued by the government/court because it's somewhat aged now (and probably was at he time of theft as well)?

    More interestingly, what the hell was he doing with it all?

    Selling it? Using it? Burning it to stay warm? Trying to rebuild HAL?

    I bet he's just a klepto.

  4. Not unusual by djupedal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have a, eh, 'friend'....that used to work for M******** Aircraft many years ago in Long Beach. He had full area access due to his job, and that part was unusual, but it meant he could come and go as he pleased - his job also meant driving a van full of equipment on a regular basis.

    His method was to first move equipment around inside the plant, waiting to see if anyone noticed. When the stuff went unnoticed for a period of time (say after an audit), he would load up and drive off base to his home, where the van would be unloaded.

    This went on for years and he eventually changed jobs.

    It was almost three years later that investigators came to his new home, hundreds of miles away. When they walked up to his door, they could see the open garage that was stuffed to the ceiling with everything from o'scopes to monitors to cameras...on and on and on.

    In the end, the company got it all back (he kept and took very good care of everything), and only charged him with theft of one almost worthless item, since that was the only piece they felt like parting with long enough to prosecute. They later told him they were shocked to find him with so much stuff...they said their research told them it would take more than a dozen people to pilfer so much equipment.

    1. Re:Not unusual by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Nope, not unusual at all. I used to work with a guy who told me in detail several times (unasked) exactly how you could get equipment out of the building (move it over here to the freight area, wait until after hours to take it to the basement, at this time of day the back doors are opened, so you can then pull a car in, etc etc). I had recently been put in charge of an equipment audit and there were several pieces of equipment missing (some of which this guy had previously shown a keen interest in). When I brought the issue up with my boss I was told "Oh no, he would never do something like that." Case closed. No investigation, nothing. I received a slight reprimand for even suggesting something like that might happen. I quit shortly after that.

      --
      This guy's the limit!
    2. Re:Not unusual by jandrese · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A better way to steal old stuff is to literally intercept it on the way to the trash can. Since it's off of the books nobody will ever come looking for it. I've collected quite a number of entirely usable ethernet cables, mice, keyboards, etc... from labs that were being torn down or reconfigured.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
  5. steeling by nutsy1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Steeling from your "boss" is quite a common phenomenon. some say that people who feel neglected or wrongfully treated are the ones that steel the most at their workplace... I don't know if thats true, but it does make sense. Happy people usually don't commit crimes... unless their happiness is chemically provoked :P

  6. That's actually a "low" loss. by mlwmohawk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No one is saying that stuff walking away is a good thing, but 19+ thousand items at about $6.00 (est) average per item is typical office flow.

    Listen, workers often bring things "into" work that are not counted, and some bring things back. I wouldn't even call it "quid pro quo," I'd call it humans working as humans do. We all do it, nothing bad mind you, I'll burn a DVD of stuff and bring it to work. I'll use my laptop because the company I may be working doesn't want to buy me one if I don't need it.

    We are not machines, humans become "part" of the organizations to which they belong, and without malice "communal" supplies and things just get used.

    Also, in a large technology environment, there is so much stuff that either gets tossed or walks. Think about keyboards, how many people order a cordless keyboard/mouse for their PCs? Well, what happens to the OEM keyboard/mouse? I'll tell you, it sits in a closet until it gets tossed or walks.

    We setup a big data center a number of years back, we ordered 300 Dell servers, each and every damn one came with a keyboard and a mouse. We had a small mountain of brand-new mice and keyboards we didn't know what to do with. Dell would ship without them, and we couldn't get rid of them. So, we left them in a pile, and about 50% walked away.

    Then there are hard disks, you upgrade a 100G hard disk to a 250G hard disk, 250g to 500g, what do you do with the old ones? They, too, sit in a closet. They have "book" value but no actual usable value. Computers, jeez, you can't get rid of them, but after 18 months they have "book" value but no practical resale value. It costs more in man-power to dispose of a 2 years old computer than it does to buy a new one. So it sits in a corner or a closet until someone asks "will that be missed?" and the response is "its just taking up space, I know nothing."

    Your "human community" will use these things. The books will show a loss, but no real loss has occurred. Bonus! You get to deduct the loss, blame pilfering, and in the end stuff useless to organization stops taking up space and gets used, employees are better off, and there's room in the closets.

    This is actually the best way. If they "gave" it to the employees, it would mean paperwork and taxes. This way, its just "lost" so sad. Everyone knows it, everyone does it, and this article is just a CYA piece.

  7. Try it anywhere else by BlueBoxSW.com · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Steal $120,000 from a local bank and see how many years in jail you end up with.

  8. Re:More likely ex-military spec by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Exactly. And how many of us in IT have a closet full of "junk" that was given to us? Could we show paperwork? Hell no! I know that I am staring at nearly a half a dozen office machines that were given to me because the business thought they wee junk and I talked them out of it. And that don't count the ones I've given to family members,donated to charity,etc.

    And with a couple of buddies in the Air Force I can tell you that the military is notorious for replacing things that don't really need replacing so they can spend their budget rather than give it back and possibly get a smaller budget next year. One even put actual theater seats in his home theater because the brass decided to spend some of the budget replacing seats that didn't need replacing.

    So while I'm sure that poor bastard is probably screwed(because who is going to remember which officer 10+ years ago told him he could have it?) there is lots of hardware floating around out there "off the books" and just as I'm sure that the accountants for this national chain I did work for a year and a half ago doesn't know that the 733MHZ I run my old DOS games was actually given to me by the local head of the business department then I'm willing to bet a lot of what they are charging this guy with is actually junk he either dumpster dove for or was simply handed.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  9. Re:That's actually a "low" guess. by TheCarp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Worst....

    Whats the value of 100 32 gig disks?

    Now whats the value of the shelf space they are sitting on.

    Whats the value of that shelf space over a year? two years? 3 years?

    If you are never going to use the drives or sell them, then they are worthless. Worst, they prevent you from using the space you have, which could store things that are going to be used soon, or NEED to be retained.

    At worst, taking home 10 or even the whole 100 32 gig disks, makes room for the retiring 250 GB disks as they come out of machines.

    -Steve

    --
    "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
  10. Re:Searches on way out by socsoc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When I worked at CompUSA (yeah, I know...), they prevented this kind of thing by locking up everything of value. A standard employee could easily put something off the floor into a bag and leave with it, but anything sized small that has a value (cameras, phones, mp3 players, laptops, etc) that could be smuggled out would be locked up. There were different levels of keys, but it was still exclusive (one interesting thing I legitimately learned was that my keys worked at other stores, big loophole).

    I would imagine that the Apple store isn't too different, if they trust their entire floor staff to access of these products, well they truly do Think Different.

  11. A lot of people seem to react badly to scavenging by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In the neighborhood that I grew up in, the neighborhood kids would often ride around on their bikes on trash day, looking for interesting stuff that had been thrown out. Most of the residents just ignored us, but occasionally, you'd get someone yelling "hey! stay out of my trash!", for reasons that at the time weren't totally clear to me. Of course, given that we sometimes found pornography, or on one memorable occasion, a printing plate with the image of a dollar bill on it, I can see why some of the neighbors might be nervous.