PENNSYLVANIA COMPUTERS STOLEN FROM PITTSBURG PUBLIC SCHOOLSProbe finds 50 computers from city schools at Squirrel Hill storeProbe finds 50 computers from city schools at Squirrel Hill store
Thursday, August 25, 2005

By Amy McConnell Schaarsmith, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Fifty computers that Pittsburgh Public Schools officials didn't even realize were missing showed up this week during a federal investigation into a Squirrel Hill store suspected of selling stolen goods, according to school district officials.

"We believe these computers are the property of Pittsburgh Public Schools and we're exploring how those computers ended up in a store in Squirrel Hill," said Pittsburgh school police chief Robert Fadzen.

Although the computers supposedly were cleaned of personal information such as students' grades and Social Security numbers, technologically savvy buyers might be able to retrieve that information from the computers' hard drives, school officials acknowledged.

The computers, which were largely obsolete machines, had been refurbished at taxpayer expense to help students connect to the Internet at home. Investigators learned that the computers were being sold on E-Bay by A1 PC Computer on Murray Avenue, Fadzen said.

The store's telephone had been disconnected as of last night and its owners could not be reached for comment.

The computers were manufactured by Dell Computer Corporation, and when investigators called Dell to research the serial numbers, the numbers led back to the school district, school authorities said.

The school district is working with federal authorities to determine how the computers ended up at the computer store and whether any others are missing from the school district's storehouse in the former Gladstone Middle School in Hazelwood, according to chief operations officer Richard Fellers