"Ricciardi's archive folder was discovered after the mayor hired an outside security consultant to audit the computers in her office."
Not a very good IT manager then.
A former IT manager for the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, was arrested on Wednesday on charges he intercepted emails sent to and from its sitting mayor and other top city officials, and forwarded them to others. Patrick Ricciardi, 45, of Hoboken, used an automated script to access every email sent to or received by Mayor Dawn …
Yes, saving the emails on his local computer in the clear was a bit special...
However I have to wonder how the charge of unauthorised access stands against the position of System Administrator which by it's very nature permits access to pretty much everything (unless you are using specific roles for lots of admins). Or are the people in charge just not aware that a sys admin holds the keys to the kingdom?
>>"A real BOFH would have saved them on somebody else's computer. "
Making backups of the email system to take home for security reasons gives pretty good deniability.
Ideally protected by encryption one can claim not to have the key for, and/or on media where access won't be recorded.
The above is, of course, entirely speculative.