Sysadmin Steals Almost 20,000 Pieces of Computer Equipment 258
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."
Old stuff? (Score:4, 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.
Simple solution. Ask (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Impressive... most impressive... or not... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Not unusual (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Simple solution. Ask (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Re:Not unusual (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Simple solution. Ask (Score:3, Interesting)
steeling (Score:2, Interesting)
That's actually a "low" loss. (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.
Try it anywhere else (Score:2, Interesting)
Steal $120,000 from a local bank and see how many years in jail you end up with.
Re:Not unusual (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Simple solution. Ask (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)
Finally I can comment with some authority! (Score:1, Interesting)
Sadly for my morals, I was always brought up to steal things and just 'don't get caught'... on to the stories...
Through my years in the IT industry at various jobs, private and government I have 'liberated' a plethora of items, most of which I'm sadly proud of.
Admitedly, I know it's wrong but on the flip side to that, many, many MANY! of the items I've 'liberated' are not ever missed, the vast vast vast majority infact.
Here's some basic examples.
In one of my jobs for a government dept, I was there during a PC replacement project, in another team.
The staff member (IDIOT!) who was employed as an asset manager has no comprehension of the value of old hardware, nor does the person signing the deals for the PC's we purchased.
In this example, PC's were purchased in 100 to 500 unit lots, these were off the shelf PC's that an end user could buy from Dell, HP, Acer web sites.
As some of you may be aware, the industry is slowing down, so old parts are not that terrible anymore.
Example: Spend $900.00 on a new Dell Core 2 Duo Desktop machine with 2gb of ram, to replace a Pentium 4 with 512 or 1gb of ram, with perfectly good 17" LCD, 60gb HDD etc.
Anyhow, to get to the point, the procurement people managed to purchase the new machines at MORE than the cost an end user could find them for on the respective, Dell, HP, Acer etc websites - despite buying HUNDREDS of the things! (how?!)
The only discount that was offered was the OLD computer(s) were taken away for free.
Yes, that's right - and this project was several years ago when a 1gb Pentium 4, in a nice slimline HP case (surprisingly well built) and 60gb drive was still a perfectly reasonable computer for your family / parents or friends.
The people taking the machines away from the place didn't track them too well and would often leave them in piles around the building, or our own staff would.
Suffice to say, over the past 7 years of work, I must have sold at LEAST 20 full computers (case, keyboard, mouse, display) varying from CRT, LCD, 19" 17" - Pentium 4 2ghz with 256mb to Pentium 4 3.4ghz with 1gb ram, DVD burners, 60gb hard disks etc./
Each of these is worth at least $100 on the second hand market up to $250 or even $400 for some of them too.
What frustrates me is that the department can't give or sell these components to staff, they won't employ someone to sell the parts second hand either.
I mean quite honestly I see the quantity and quality of hardware simply thrown out or given away and as a geek I can genuinely and utterly assure anyone reading this far, I could comfortably pay myself a wage of $70,000 a year and STILL make the department a profit in selling old goods - but nope, we give them away or even in some cases PAY to have good machines taken away.
In the above example I have no hesitation, and no regrets in liberating this equipment, mine and your tax money goes towards this type of stupidity.
(yes, even Americans, I've got no doubt your government departments do the same thing)
This is only the beginning of the things I've liberated over the years (not all govt, far from it I've been in many jobs), as mentioned - quite honestly less than 2% of the things I've ever taken have been complained about.
Here goes... - very very approximate list
20 modems (back when they were a 150$ item just as broadband was new)
30+ hard drives
20full PC's including monitor / keyboard / mouse
Graphics cards
Scanner
10 LCD monitors
CD or DVD burners
Old printers
SCSI cables
Tools
Blank disks
Switches, routers
Memory (100 sticks plus?)
3 boxes of paper reams
20 print cartidges
High quality monitor arms (not cheap either, I highly recommend good flexible display arms)
High quality office chair (1000$ RRP)
Crockery, cutlery matching sets to replace my old stuff
10 gallons of washing liquid
5kgs of coffee
2 year supply of toilet paper for a house of 4.
5 laptops ('old' ones that needed to be replaced, you know - just 1.6ghz P
Re:Simple solution. Ask (Score:3, 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'?
Re:Simple solution. Ask (Score:5, 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. :-)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That's actually a "low" guess. (Score:3, 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
Re:Searches on way out (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
A lot of people seem to react badly to scavenging (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.
Re:So True... (Score:1, Interesting)
That's so true. My work place had a policy of selling returned items for half price to employees. One abuser later the whole thing was thrown out the door.