US Customs supervisor busted for stealing Core i7 CPUs, RAM, and hard drives from Homeland Security PCs, damage estimated at $105,800 — stolen tech swapped with inferior hardware and cashed out on Newegg
www.tomshardware.com
Silicon heist at the border
  • finallymadeanaccount@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    4 days ago

    Hidden surveillance cameras captured Liu opening government computers and swapping hardware during the midnight shift.

    46 times? What were they waiting for?!

  • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    4 days ago

    Restoring the stolen hardware could cost about $20,460, while fully replacing all 46 compromised computers with equivalent hardware would cost an estimated $105,800. However, additional labor to configure each system for government use will drive the bill even higher.

    I like how this dude basically did the inverse of pc servicing during his night shift, but it’s somehow gonna cost more than $100k to do the exact same thing to swap the correct components. Classic government math lol

    • kestrel7_7@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      He was doing the work “for free” because he was gonna get paid by selling the stolen parts (or else he was double dipping). Point is, the government has to pay someone else to fix em

    • BigPotato@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Pre-builts are cheaper than single components but they only had the contact for the computers and technically they still have the cases, maybe motherboards too, so they’d be over strength if they bought more prebuilts. So now they have to go off economy if they want to get those computers working again or deal with the hassle of turning in the old equipment, waiting for it to fall off the books and then ordering “new” equipment but during that time people wouldn’t be working so you might spend 80k to avoid spending 1M in salaries to avoid waiting to spend 20k.

      • historicaldocuments@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Some of the computers has Raptor Lake processors and they were replaced with Pentiums?

        Lacking more evidence I’m going to wager this person was swapping stuff on equipment that had already been turned in because I can’t picture a world where someone who knows enough about computers to know what parts to take and has a pile of pentiums to work with tries that on anything someone’s expected to use. Then again emailing one’s personal account from an official account about Illegal Activity kind of makes me wonder.

        “Degraded performance” sounds like a euphamism.

    • DudeWhoYapsTooMuch@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      ??? The amount is gonna be 100k because they have to buy the components and see if the damage has been compromised for the software. That shit adds up expeditiously.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      4 days ago

      Yeah but you gotta pay kick a percentage up to the boss. This guy got busted, so I guess he didn’t do that.

  • JasonDJ@lemmy.zipEnglish
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    4 days ago

    I got some nicotine pouches that was supposed to come in from Sweden and it’s been stuck in customs in Newark for over a month and a half now.

    I had since made another order of the same stuff from the same vendor, it came in through a different port, and was delivered 2 days later.

    I dunno what’s going on in Newark but I suspect it’s not going to be “destroyed”, at least not in the means they expect.

  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    They replaced the stolen parts with inferior hardware and exchanged the stolen equipment through Newegg’s trade-in program for store credit.

    Actually a decent way to move the loot.