WASHINGTON STATE (UPDATE) COMPUTERS STOLEN Seattle police investigating city worker for suspected computer theft:
Last updated July 1, 2009 11:37 p.m. PT
Seattle police investigating city worker for suspected computer theft
By CASEY MCNERTHNEY
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
A man working for Seattle's Department of Information Technology is being investigated by Seattle police for suspected workplace theft, and city officials have put him on paid administrative leave while they conduct an internal investigation.
Police say they linked the suspect to missing computers in 13 incidents before serving a search warrant earlier this month on the his work cubicle and city-owned cell phone.
A detective confiscated two computers from the suspect's cubicle in the Seattle Municipal Tower that were said to have been kept without authorization.
Seattlepi.com is not naming the suspect because he has not been charged in the case.
The internal investigation, launched about two weeks ago, is expected to run concurrently with the police investigation, Department of Information Technology spokeswoman D'Anne Mount said.
Police began their investigating Sept. 2 after thefts were reported from cubicles, a storage room and information technology surplus desk on the 26th floor of the Municipal Tower. The thefts had been occurring since at least Feb. 1, according to the search warrant affidavit made public this week in court files.
When some computers are marked for surplus, they're placed on the 26th floor surplus desk with signs warning against removing items, noting it's against city policy. When enough items accumulate, an employee records the serial numbers and notifies warehouse workers to pick them up. Some items are then sold by the city.
On Sept. 2, police say an information technology employee became suspicious of his coworker after seeing him with a laptop. An additional security camera was added the following month to record the surplus desk and part of the cubicle used by the suspect.
The afternoon of March 26, police say the camera recorded the suspect taking a laptop from the surplus desk.
"(The suspect's) supervisor, Carol Denning, told me he is not assigned a city laptop, and further said he would never have reason to remove any equipment from the surplus desk," Seattle police Detective Philip Wall wrote in the affidavit.
Denning declined to comment Wednesday.
On May 14, the man was told to retrieve a laptop from a city employee. The laptop should have been reassigned to another employee, but the laptop was not returned or recorded in the equipment record logs, police said.
The work ticket was allegedly marked as completed by the employee in question, but Wall wrote in the affidavit "the computer has disappeared from city inventory." Police believe video surveillance shows the man leaving with the laptop four days later.
Officers are also investigating the man in connection to a computer that went missing May 21 from the City Emergency Operations Center and a computer that was taken last month from a Department of Executive Administration employee on the 43rd floor of the Seattle Municipal Tower.
Police say video surveillance the day of the later suspected theft shows the man entering the 43rd floor -- a place he had no reason to enter for job duties -- and returning to his work floor with "what looks to be a laptop computer sandwiched between the clipboard and small notebook," Wall wrote.
Also last month, the Department of Information Technology worker who became suspicious of the suspect last fall reported seeing a Dell laptop taken from the surplus desk under the man's desk.
Police requested to search his cell phone because in one of the incidents, the man is seen in at least twice on surveillance footage texting or checking text messages. The search warrant was issued the afternoon of June 17.
Mount, the Department of Information Technology spokeswoman, said it's unclear when the internal investigation will end. The employee being investigated could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
The city's Information Technology Department has about 210 employees in four facilities: the Seattle Municipal Tower, City Hall, a communications shop and a warehouse. Workers are responsible for managing the city's municipal television channel, Web site, and telephone system among other things.
The city has roughly 10,000 computers. But a definitive number of how many the department services was not available because some entities handle their own computers, Mount said.
The suspect was hired in July 2004.
In 2005 -- the last year for which seattlepi.com keeps city employee salary figures -- the man was paid $71,140.25 for his computer support job.
Court records show on March 16 of that year, the State Employment Security Department took legal action to get a payment of $837.16 from the man -- the overpayment of unemployment insurance compensation plus interest and fees.
The debt was paid in full later that year.
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