INDIANA INVESTIGATIVE REPORT ON STEALING FROM THE STATE WISH TV 8: Indianapolis News and Weather - Stealing From the State - An I-Team 8 Investigation

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Stealing From the State - An I-Team 8 Investigation
Every time a state employee drives a state-owned vehicle, logs onto a state-owned computer or staples with a state-owned stapler, you're paying for it. I-Team 8 has learned you may be paying for it twice because a lot of state property gets stolen and then has to be replaced at your expense.

In the hustle and bustle of state government, in the hallways where the peoples' business is conducted, a lot of the peoples' property is walking out the door. Nearly half-a-million dollars worth since 2005.Stolen laptops, lost construction equipment and missing cash.

We asked for information from the ten biggest state agencies. Together, they employ more than 80% of all state workers. We asked for the inventory of the lost, missing orstolen property and the police reports filed to find out how much it is all worth. The results varied widely between agencies.

Some of the information was incomplete, some didn't include the value of the items, some didn't include police reports even though those are required if something worth more than $500 turns up missing.

"Inventory control is very important. If we don't have the right things on the shelves, we can't do the job we're being asked to do," said Andy Dietrick of INDOT.

The job of the Indiana Department of Transportation is hampered by nearly $400,000 in lost or stolen equipment we found since the start of 2005. A tractor worth $17,000, stolen. Also, lots of electronics such as field radios and laptop computers, all stolen.

At most agencies I-Team 8 contacted, laptops are the most commonly stolen item. A total of 38 laptops stolen from the homes or cars or desks of state employees. At least one laptop from the State Department of Health contained medical information.

I-Team 8 asked what the state is doing to keep tabs on all this equipment tax dollars buy.

"We're moving over to the Indiana Office of Technology and letting them do the purchasing for us, as are most other state agencies. They are very good with their encryption, their security and the tracking of those items that are out in the field that they have procured for us," Dietrick responded.

Tim Wilcox is a private investigator with 30 years experience in loss prevention.

"Very few people are proactive, government, business, private individuals. Few are proactive until they have a crisis. If they have a crisis, when they have a crisis they try to lock the doors after the cows have already walked out," said Wilcox.

Wilcox has one solution. He says some private companies install secret software on computers alerting them when and where someone logs onto the Internet with a stolen laptop.

"They notify the police. They provide probable cause information for a search warrant. The police just go exercise the search warrant, recover thestolen property, arrest the people involved, and they'll assist in the prosecution of those people. Everybody should have that, that has something worth stealing," added Wilcox.

But the state isn't using software like that to track down stolen laptops. Big ticket items worth $20,000 that are missing have to be reported to the State Auditor. Agencies don't have to report the items as lost, missing orstolen, they can call them "retirements".

Even though one duty of the Auditor is to keep track of only Indiana's biggest assets, we wanted State Auditor Tim Berry to look at our list of all state property reportedly lost missing orstolen because it added up to so much. We wanted to know if there might be a better way to track all of this. For nearly a week we repeatedly requested a chance to speak with him. A spokesperson for Berry turned us down saying there'd be no reason for comment since the Auditor's office had nothing to do with our audit.

Finally, Berry himself emailed us Thursday afternoon to say a new financial system will be installed to track assets worth at least $500.

The bottom line is accountability. Since Indiana doesn't require a central accounting of all lost, missing or stolen state property, you keep paying for it.