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EMC Engineer Steals Almost $1 Million of Kit One Piece at a Time
aesoteric writes "An EMC test engineer has pleaded guilty to stealing almost $1 million worth of kit from his employer. He reportedly stole the unspecified goods from the storage giant's North Carolina factory using 'a small bag' to smuggle the kit out before selling it on the internet under a pseudonym."
Im sorry - define Kit? thanks
for copyright infringement.
Reminds me of the old Johnny Cash song...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Who hasn't stolen at least a million bucks worth of kit from work?
BL Trading is also being charged with sale and receipt of stolen property, wire fraud and the installing and selling on of products with EMC firmware that didn’t have support contracts to take care of them.
WTF?
What is "kit" in this instance?
"Kit and kit! What is kit?!" - Spock's Brain
Willie...
wire fraud? seriously? These tack-on charges make a mockery of the law.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Is it time to stop coming here?
For you, yes :-)
Hello editors: Are the story aggregators on full automatic now? Is "kit" some Australian slang for something? How about filing us in? Don't hold out on us.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
At first I wondered whether they were talking about polywell fusion or linux cncing.
...of a tale my dad used to tell me when I was young.
I don't know the full details, so it could be made up, the details could be wrong or it might have actually been like a TV show or something, but anyhoo.
A guy who worked in a factory would leave every day with a wheelbarrow full of rubbish. One of his bosses was sure he was stealing something, so every now and then he'd search the wheelbarrow and come up dry - rubbish, rubbish and more rubbish. The manager got so frustrated, he started searching every single day and still found nothing.
Eventually, the guy figured out what he was stealing - wheelbarrows.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
'kit' is a well known and old term for 'stuff'. A kit bag was what (may be still is) military used for their personal stuff - razor etc. In any case, this reminds me of the story about the guy working at the factory who was seen taking wheelbarrows of trash from the premises day after day. Security could not figure out what was going on. Finally confronted the man, who eventually confessed to stealing wheelbarrows...
From TFA
He has been charged with identity theft, fraud and transport of stolen property and has already agreed to pay back US$929,891 to EMC.
I get where the theft comes from but the identity theft ? Is that just to give him a longer sentence ? And 32 years for that , this just shows how screwed up our courts are where you can get less time for murder then for theft . Maybe he should have killed someone when stealing the HW may have gotten a shorter sentence .
It's amazing how much you can get if you steal constantly.
For example, Salim Kara made several million dollars stealing coins from light rail boxes
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/thief+stole+nearly+million+coin+time/4028648/story.html
What exactly is:
-kit?
-EMC?
-BL trading?
this EMC Celerra NS model 120-121-122-123-124-125-126-127-128-129-130 NAS I just bought off craigslist.
I'm not sure I agree with a prison sentence, if he's agreeing and able to pay the amount back. No need to further feed the prison industry with non-violent criminals. If he receives anything even approaching a significant portion of the 32 years, it would be a travesty. Plenty of people have done far more horrible things and paid far less for those crimes. Crimes which were not merely about some cash. I would hate to think that we think it's okay to essentially take the rest of a man's life for something like this. We just went through several years of far worse white collar criminals getting away with far worse (and covered by the tax payers, even!) in this country.
What kind of market is there for dodgy EMC gear? I always got the impression that EMC were the chaps you talked to if you didn't mind paying too much; but really wanted to have the vendor breathing down your neck for the duration of the (expensive) support agreement. Are there companies that shell out for that, and then start buying replacement parts on Ebay? Or, like Cisco, is there an active market of people trying to put together certification study kits on the relative cheap?
It means routing equipment. Specifically that.
This is a story about an crime committed in Apex, North Carolina by a man from Sanford, NC and tried in a Boston, Massachusetts court. Why does the summary link to a story in an Australian web site? Why not, say, to this: http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/crime_files/crime_watch/nc-man-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-from-emc-corp-25-apx-20110107 or this: http://www.abc6.com/Global/story.asp?S=13800798?
Wire fraud, in the United States Code, is any criminally fraudulent activity that has been determined to have involved electronic communications of any kind, at any phase of the event. The involvement of electronic communications adds to the severity of the penalty, so that it is greater than the penalty for fraud that is otherwise identical except for the non-involvement of electronic communications. As in the case of mail fraud, the federal statute is often used as a basis for a separate, federal prosecution of what would otherwise have been a violation only of a state law.
The crime of wire fraud is codified at 18 U.S.C. 1343, and reads as follows:
Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.
In the case of United States v. LaMacchia, a student of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was charged with wire fraud when, because he had not profitted personally from online distribution of millions of dollars' worth of illegally copied software, he could not be charged with criminal copyright infringement. The United States District Court, District of Massachusetts, dismissed the charges, noting they were an attempt to find a broad federal crime where the more narrowly defined one had not occurred. Congress then amended the copyright law to limit further use of this loophole. Wire fraud
The reference is to the NET Act of 1997. "No Electronic Theft."
So two hard drives?
"He has been charged with identity theft, fraud and transport of stolen property and has already agreed to pay back US$929,891 to EMC."
But he made $109 profit, apparently? Win! :-)
from credit default swap contracts with AIG that got payed off 100 cents on the dollar when the taxpayers were forced to bail it out. the biggest theft in history was the credit bubble of 2005-2007, but people are too busy refreshing fark and watching live at 5 to care.
I company I used to work for was operated by someone too naive to understand it was the support and not the intrinsic equipment that mattered. I came in and they were using some Cheapo NAS box that used 4 drives on two IDE channels as the storage in RAID5. Of course one drive failed and took out a channel, so after I recovered the data (it was backed up, but I recovered data off the three working drives), it was time to look for a replacement. I was told a very very very puny budget, so I priced out basically the same thing except with 4 IDE channels and bought as a new, supported, warrantied server. After a few days, the President announced he found the perfect 'enterprise' Dell enclosure on eBay and that was going to be the solution.... Even off random ebay guy, as an enclosure only (excluding controller and server to drive it), at much reduced capacity it was about twice as much as the server I suggested (President was willing to stretch the budget he dictated because he found himself such a 'good deal').
Of course, after two weeks of operation, the midplane somehow glitched in a way to corrupt drives and lose all data. Dell charged quite a bit for the service call to come in and fix the stupid thing since there was no support or warranty remotely associated with the thing, and the enclosure still had no warranty associated with it. He never admitted that it was a mistake. My second-worst job didn't last too much longer after that (got fired because they decided they needed to open a position to afford to look for a person with MCSE at the time).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Considering how EMC's crap is overpriced, it doesn't take much to make $1 million.
There's one thing that's more astonishing than how expensive their crap is: how crappy their software is. It looks like it's written by deranged apes. Not just because of the million bugs, the offensively useless help files or the fact that their appliances are running on Windows 3.11 (true fact!). No, there's something to it that's simply _wrong_.
I bet it didn't cost him a dime.
9 years is a long time to do something like that. How did they catch him?
Was it on the factory/warehouse end? One gets the impression that they weren't really missing anything, at least for a long time.
Somehow it wouldn't surprise me if EMC actually bought their own parts off the second-hand market. Both for "intelligence" (ie, where are these parts originating) and to keep the used market supply of key parts constrained so that "official" new parts sell better.
where people in the service would steal an entire jeep, one part at a time and ship it home.
$2M of EMC equipment - wow, that's like five hard drives!
So kit = stuff = gear. So what? Why do they not specify what this stuff is? I've unfortunately had my home robbed and neither the police report or insurance report said "They stole stuff".
if he was taking SSD drives $1 million could be just 30 drives
nuf said
in selling overpriced Windows 3.11 machines with lots of overpriced disks in them. They are also world famous for having the worst user interface, the most buggy device drivers (do not use EMC with Linux!) and the most unusable support website -- PowerStink(tm)
They suck at software. Every EMC-provided piece of software I've had the misfortune to look at has been a profound disaster. Their Linux drivers generate kernel oops as a matter of routine -- and it's even documented -- if you don't deactivate things in the right order.
where is the *news*? This is filler, fluff, non-news.
http://www.awfullybigmoustache.com
i knew it -- he got his plan from johnny cash --:-D
One Piece at at Time
Well, I left Kentucky back in '49
An' went to Detroit workin' on a 'sembly line
The first year they had me puttin' wheels on cadillacs
Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by
And sometimes I'd hang my head and cry
'Cause I always wanted me one that was long and black.
One day I devised myself a plan
That should be the envy of most any man
I'd sneak it out of there in a lunchbox in my hand
Now gettin' caught meant gettin' fired
But I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired
I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand.
CHORUS
I'd get it one piece at a time
And it wouldn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive everybody wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is a round.
(Written by W. Kemp; Recorded by Johnny Cash, 1976)
I left kentucky back in '59/ went to Detroit working assembly line/The first year they had me putting wheels on Cadillacs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIuo0KIqD_E Also
now getting caught meant getting fired...
'kit' is a well known and old term for 'stuff'. A kit bag was what (may be still is) military used for their personal stuff - razor etc.
In any case, this reminds me of the story about the guy working at the factory who was seen taking wheelbarrows of trash from the premises day after day. Security could not figure out what was going on. Finally confronted the man, who eventually confessed to stealing wheelbarrows...
Sorry, it's not that well known anymore. gramps.
Be seeing you...
You'd only get a 100G drive and no bracket there
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
i say it all the time. never had anyone ask what it means. they smiled and nodded like they always do when i speak.
Wheelborrow theft urban legend on Snopes (as other posters say there are versions with bikes and donkeys too but others know your version too). According to Snopes it's been around for years and was also mentioned in a Crocodile Dundee movie,,,
I remember years ago when I was working at Motorola, we had a guy who was stealing loads of pagers. He would take smoking breaks several times a day. Every time he would take his smokes and coffee. Even in those days the guards would check out your bag, but he would not check in your coffee cup. That sucker took 2 pagers several times a day, 5 days a week for a long time.
He would then have his buddy who owned a pager store sell them. Made tons of cash.
Another guy was diverting whole tractor trailer trucks to his address! He stole millions! He was only caught because one time a truck returned because of a bad address. That was so awesome. Big scandal. Soon after we got metal detectors at all the doors. Lame.
Y'know cause EMC arrays are horrendously expensive.
I'm amazed that my fellow Americans are unable to extrapolate what "kit" means. We have plenty of "First Aid Kits". "Kit Cars", NO, not the Knight Rider version, thanks. As well as "Cosmetic Kits", ask your mom.
Then directly to the point, who has never heard the song "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile."? Check out the contemporary version as opposed to the 1915 German original --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm86M2TKFDk
I guess the EMC engineer took the lyrics literally when considering his financial woes. (ba-dum-bum) Thank You I'm here every open mic night.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It wouldn't take too many components (or "kit" if you prefer for some reason) priced at EMC's ridiculously over inflated "before discount" pricing to hit $1 million worth of "loss". This isn't even really news, just fairly typical inventory shrinkage.
If it was just a few dishwasher and washing machine components, he'd have come up to $1M in about 5 trips.
...
Well, It's a '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56
'57, '58' 59' automobile
It's a '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67
'68, '69, '70 automobile.
(Watch out for the irritating popup/under/ontops.)
mark
I thought he was taking out the KIT knight Rider car one piece at a time.
Being well read, with a decent vocabulary, is not restricted to the elderly. You too can aspire to adequacy.
At the price of EMC kit $1M worth of stuff is about 3 hard drives and a drive bay blanking plate.
Reminds me of an old joke (it's kind of a shaggy dog story, so apologies in advance):
The Kremlin is getting reports that theft is happening at one of their factories. Unfortunately, it is so disorganized, they aren't even sure what is being stolen, let alone who is taking the State's property. They decide to send some KGB men to the factory to find and punish the thief.
One of the KGB narrows it down to a couple of suspects. His prime suspect is a truck driver. Each day the truck driver goes by the front gate and the KGB guard stops him and searches the truck. Day after day, week after week. Nothing can be found.
The KGB man is getting very frustrated, but continues the daily searches. The truck driver always stands to the side and watches the KGB man search the truck, looking completely at east. (You see, the KGB man knows that the truck driver should be nervous. In Soviet Russia, the innocent are always nervous).
Anyways, this continues for months. Finally, the KGB man can't take it anymore. He pulls the truck driver aside and says, "Look, Comrade. I know you are the thief. I know you are stealing from Mother Russia. But for the life of me, I can't prove it. So I will make you a deal. You tell me what you are stealing and how you are getting away with it, and I will look the other way."
The truck driver thinks about it for a moment, he knows he probably shouldn't agree, but this is a joke, so he has to, and says, "Comrade KGB man, it is very simple. I am stealing the trucks."