Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Verizon Tech Charged In $4.5M Equipment Scam

Posted by samzenpus on from the show-me-the-money dept.

McGruber writes "Michael Baxter, a 62-year-old man from Ball Ground, Georgia, was recently arrested and charged with multiple counts of fraud for allegedly placing false equipment orders. As a network engineer at the southeastern regional headquarters of Verizon Wireless, Baxter allegedly submitted hundreds of fraudulent service requests to Cisco. According to prosecutors: 'The service requests were fraudulent in that no parts needed to be replaced, and instead of placing the replacement parts into service in Verizon Wireless network, Baxter simply took them home and sold them to third-party re-sellers for his own profit.'"

7 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. I thought maybe he was... by Genda · · Score: 5, Funny

    Building routers 1 part at a time...

    1. Re:I thought maybe he was... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      "One Piece At A Time"

      Well, I left Georgia back in '96
      An' went to Verizon workin' on a orderin' gig
      The first year they had me dialin' cisco up

      Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by
      And sometimes I'd hang my head and cry
      'Cause I always wanted me an ap that could do it all.

      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 dhl box 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 router 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 boards
      I'm gonna flood around in style
      I'm gonna drive everybody wild
      'Cause I'll have the only one there is a round.

      So the very next day when I punched in
      With my big dhl box and with help from my friends
      I left that day with a dhl box full of asics
      Now, I never considered myself a thief
      VZ wouldn't miss just one little piece
      Especially if I strung it out over several years.

      The first day I got me some ports
      And the next day I got me cpu and cords
      Then I got me a big ass housing and all of the chrome
      The little things I could get in my big lunchbox
      Like the power unit and all of those IOS docs
      But the big stuff we snuck out in my buddy's mobile home.

      Now, up to now my plan went all right
      'Til we tried to put it all together one night
      And that's when we noticed that something was definitely wrong.

      The housing was a '96
      And the dsl modems turned out to be a '04
      And when we tried to put in the ethernet all the holes were gone.

      So we drilled it out so that it would fit
      And with a little bit of help with an A-daptor kit
      We had that pirate os bootin' just like a song
      Now the terminals were truly seminal,
      It could have been straight out of HAL
      But when we pulled out the switch it booted to x.

      The back end looked kinda funny too
      But we put it together and when we got thru
      Well, that's when we noticed that we only had 10GBE
      About that time my wife walked out
      And I could see in her eyes that she had her doubts
      But she opened the door and said "Honey, connect me to Ravencrest."

      So we flooded the boards just for giggles
      And I headed her right on down to wow
      I could hear everybody laughin' for realms around
      But up there at the battleground they didn't laugh
      'Cause to diagnose us up it took the whole staff
      And when they got to see the ping it was minus twelve.

      [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 boards
      I'm gonna flood around in style
      I'm gonna drive everybody wild
      'Cause I'll have the only one there is a round.

      [Spoken] Ugh! Yow, CMD TACO
      This is the IPSEC 6000 MODULE
      In the SCA 30K Come on

      Huh, This is the CIOSDIOS9999
      And negatory on the cost of this mow-chine there CMD TACO
      You might say I went right up to the client
      And ordered it up, it's cheaper that way

  2. When he grows up. by deniable · · Score: 5, Funny

    He wants to be a defense contractor.

  3. Big deal, a couple of routers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The real crime here might be the price of Cisco equipment.

  4. Re:greed kills by erroneus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You got that right. It was a pretty good scam! If you keep it low profile enough, no one would have noticed. But with enough "failure reports" concentrated and centered around him, it obviously caused an investigation. Another problem in here is that Cisco didn't want the old equipment back? That's really odd. Not wanting the old equipment back was the hole which made it all possible I think.

  5. RMA System by sociocapitalist · · Score: 5, Informative

    When Cisco ships a replacement part under smartnet (service contract) or via a partner it comes looking for the part that was to be replaced. Normally I believe the limit is 30 days and then Cisco will look to charge the customer for the part.

    How this guy could think that no one would come looking for all of this is fairly surprising.

    --
    blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  6. $4.5M of Cisco Gear? by clonehappy · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, he stole 1 router?