IT guy at US govt fraud watchdog stole 16 computers from... US govt fraud watchdog An IT contractor for a US government fraud and abuse watchdog pleaded guilty on Thursday to stealing 16 US government computers. According to prosecutors, Andrew Cheveers, 31, served as a techie for the State Department's Office of Inspector General (State OIG), where he held a security clearance and set up PCs for government …
On the surface, a straightforward crime and then there was the theft of the items as well.
Too may stories about the Surface having a component go bad after warranty period ends and the poor bloody owners are being told by Micro$oft they will just need to buy a new one. Gone are the days when you could pull down a machine, de-solder the naughty, recalcitrant part and replace it. Now even the manufacturer is unable to fix their own product.
Joyfully my surface died in time to get a warranty replacement, and when its keyboard died while I was on holiday in Australia the MS store in Sydney kindly gave me a replacement.
Ok, it's a US keyboard layout that entirely misses a whole key but it's better than taking a keyboardless tablet to the next 14 countries on my itinerary.
Manafort just got under three years for not paying millions in taxes, lying to congress, breaking plea agreements and being a tool of autocratic regimes. I bet this guy gets a longer sentence because he didn't steal hundreds of times more. Possession of marijuana has resulted in more time for less well off offenders than these two will serve.
I'm stunned by the stupidity involved in this, he'll never work in a professional role again and if he got more than $400 per tablet I'll be amazed. its unbelievable that he didn't realise how easy it would be to track down the devices once they had been sold on and then track them back to him. I can only assume that he was hoping they would just be written off. This did happen to me many years ago on a roll out project with no secure storage. Pallets of PC base units were left in offices for weeks while the roll out took place, as service desk staff were fitting in the installs around their normal work to save money. this meant a planned 2 week deployment took over 3 months. Whilst there was perimeter security at the building exits and entrances and staff were trusted we still got down to the bottom tier of one pallet to find that the 4 base unit boxes were empty. In that case I was instructed to not report the crime and to write off the devices to avoid the story hitting the local press. Needless to say I did get the secure storage the next time around, and dedicated engineers so we could complete the job in a timely manner.
I've worked for several companies who etch the asset numbers on laptops or tablets for this very reason.
The last place I had anything to do with stock control, we had a fair amount of pilfering, so we found a supplier of self adhesive security labels. We would engrave the number on the label onto the stock and then stick the label over it.
UV flourescing ink was good for marking inside some items too.
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