US Customs Supervisor Stole $105,800 in PC Parts from Homeland Security, Fenced Them on Newegg
US Customs supervisor busted for stealing hardware from Homeland Security PCs
A Customs and Border Protection supervisor in Calais, Maine, allegedly swiped Intel Core i7 CPUs, RAM, and hard drives from at least 46 Homeland Security computers across three border stations, swapped in inferior parts, and cashed out the stolen hardware through Newegg's trade-in program. The FBI has charged Terry "Jiajia" Liu with theft and damage to government property, with losses estimated at $105,800.
They replaced the stolen parts with inferior hardware and exchanged the stolen equipment through Newegg's trade-in program for store credit.
- pushcx
Many years ago, I arrived to my half-height cubicle at a Fortune 100 company to see that my desktop PC case was ajar. I set the CRT aside, opened it, and realized that the RAM had been removed. My neighbor explained what must have happened: another employee must have needed to double their RAM from 8 to 16 MB. Requisitioning an upgrade was a weeks-long bureaucratic process that required approval by one's manager and IT, perhaps prompting a review of per-team resource allocation. Repairing a broken PC was a trivial help desk ticket; my PC was restored in an hour or two.
- avadodin
I thought this would be about GPUs.
Corporate computers often have a 4 or 8 GB VRAM brand GPU that sits idle only running the desktop animations. If you have an HDMI port for the iGPU or however the monitor connection for laptops work, it is almost a victimless crime.
Maybe even one stick of ram in two stick setups.
If you steal the CPU yeah someone is bound to notice even if it is an atom.
- muragekibicho
Selling 105,800$ worth of compute for 39*200=7800$ is similar to theft I've only encountered in the third world.
My boiler's copper water supply lines were vandalized for scrap. Their total value was 1540$ but the thief sold the copper for a grand total of 20$. The police and I went to the local scrap market, asked for anyone with a great deal on copper supply lines, and the perp was caught.
- 2b3a51
Hang on, 105 800 / 46 = $2300 per machine. Good heavens, when I was partially responsible for hardware refreshes in a UK public sector organisation with around a thousand endpoint PCs we budgeted something like £600 a box. Have prices really gone up that much in a decade or so, or is this some maximalist prosecution claim?
RAM thefts: Birmingham UK, Jewellery Quarter, St Paul's Square. Some may remember the solicitor's office on the corner that had 'RAM removed from PCs overnight' etched on the street level windows pre-millenium. Has been converted into posh flats now.
- taf2
I remember my parents working for a company in the 90s and the mailroom was one the most common places things went missing… aka theft. I recall my mom had her purse stolen at her cube… theft from within similar to security exploits from within seem to be the most real security vulnerability to be focused on. That sshd that can only be accessed from a few specific ips with the right port knocking is not how you get hacked… at least not normally
- 1970-01-01
Bured lede: i7 CPUs for border patrol.. why?
- walrus01
If you've ever driven through the land crossing border in either direction at Calais, Maine (and St. Stephen, NB), they're both really tiny and sleepy places. It's astonishing to think that he wouldn't get caught. Like, you cripple the PCs of a place where your colleagues use them on a day to day basis and think nobody is going to notice? Real genius move there, bud.
- geetee
Why in the world is U.S. Customs and Border Protection hiring foreign nationals?