Airman gets prison, fine for computer theft

[unhappycamper]

Airman gets prison, fine for computer theft
By Kent Harris, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, May 3, 2008

AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy — A senior airman assigned to the 31st Munitions Squadron at Camp Darby was sentenced to 45 days in prison, fined $500 and stripped of one rank Friday in a special court-martial involving the theft of government computers.

Gregory A. Green, who was a part of the 712th RED HORSE Detachment at the time the incidents took place in the fall of 2006, pleaded guilty to larceny and unlawfully selling government property. He was charged with taking 13 computers and two monitors that belonged to his unit — which was disbanding — instead of turning them over to proper authorities for redistribution or disposal.

In a stipulation of fact that was part of a pretrial agreement he signed, Green said he filled out paperwork indicating that 12 of the computers would be turned over for disposal. He kept the computers instead, giving five of them to a soldier also stationed at Camp Darby. The military judge, Col. Gordon Hammock, said during the trial that the soldier received Article 15 punishment and is no longer in the service.

Green said he later decided to keep the computer he used at work and two monitors and didn’t try to document their loss. He later returned one of the computers to his office, sold another and gave two away. The government has since recovered all the computers and monitors, and they were on display in the courtroom.

The computers and monitors, which were all at least a few years old, were valued at about $4,600 using Air Force calculations and $13,600 using an Army formula, according to testimony. The two services reportedly have differing methods of accounting for depreciation due to age.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54510

[Catch22Dem]

1. I'll just never understand what motivates someone

to risk soooo much for so little

[OregonBlue]

2. But the State Department is missing $30 million in equipment, mostly laptops and so far they are

no one is being questioned much less imprisoned or fined!!!!!!!

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000002716318&cpage=3

Hundreds of Laptops Missing at State Department, Audit Finds

As many as 400 of the unaccounted for laptops belong to the department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, according to officials familiar with the findings.

Auditors found that the department had lost track of $30 million worth of equipment, according to one official, “the vast majority of which . . . perhaps as much as 99 per cent,” was laptops.

Mark Duda, a representative of the Inspector General’s office at the meeting, warned the managers that they needed to get on top of the equipment issue before it “blows up.” He said a scandal loomed akin to the one that engulfed the Veterans Administration in 2006, when news broke that a VA official had taken home a laptop with the personal records of 26 million veterans, where it was stolen.

“It’s the worst flaw you can have in management control,” one close observer of the State Department’s problems said