She ran a program that used iPods to teach reading and math to underprivileged Native American school children living on tribal lands. Now Kristy Stock, 46, from New Mexico, is serving 18 months in prison for stealing 3,000 of them, which she resold for personal gain of more than $800,000 between 2013 and 2018.
It depends at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland (via Engadget), and Stock isn’t the first to be convicted in connection with the scheme – it all seems to center around Saurabh Chawla, a 36-year-old Colorado resident who bought stolen electronics and other devices. goods and resold them on eBay and Amazon. . Law enforcement raided it in 2019, according to an earlier press release, and he also bought stolen iPads from another school district in New Mexico.
Perhaps even more importantly, Chawla worked with a FedEx distribution center manager from Delaware named Joseph Kukta to steal packages before they were delivered to customers like Walmart, with Chawla paying him $1.5 million according to court documents. These thefts included shipments of Nike sneakers and devices from Apple, Epson, Kenwood and Magellan, among other goods.
“Kukta selected specific packages that he believed, based on the senders of the packages, contained high-end electronics or other valuable merchandise that could be easily resold,” reads part of the post. another press release, which continues:
In 2018, Kukta also began stealing packages from loaded FedEx trailers for delivery to a retail store in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Kukta visited the FedEx facility on Sundays, holidays, or other times when employees were not on site, and removed packages he had previously identified from FedEx trailers. Kukta attempted to avoid detection by turning off lights in the facility and blocking some surveillance cameras with cardboard boxes and other objects. Kukta loaded the stolen packages into his truck or vehicles operated by FedEx contractors and parked at the facility, then drove the vehicles to his rented storage unit in Seaford, where he unloaded and stored the articles.
It’s unclear whether Stock, the school district employee, removed iPods from Native American school children who needed them, or just those who weren’t being used. A court document says the iPods were bought in bulk with federal grants and the school district stored the unused ones.
In November 2018, Stock allegedly told Chawla she would check “the school’s iPod inventory and let you know what I can do for you” for “Black Friday,” but was apparently only able to steal some. 30 that time, saying she had “to keep some on hand until the end of the year for the students.” I guess that’s nice of him?
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Screenshot by Sean Hollister/The Verge
Chawla was sentenced to 66 months in prison; Kukta turned 42 months; James Bender of Maryland, who let Chawla use his eBay and PayPal accounts to sell the stolen goods, was sentenced to a year and a day. Chawla also agreed to forfeit at least $3.5 million in assets, with the court seizing seven bank accounts, a 2013 Tesla Model S, and forcing him to sell a five-bedroom, two-story home in Aurora, Colorado which he bought with fraudulent money. Kukta will pay $1.1 million and forfeit an additional $1.88 million in assets, according to the prosecutor’s office.
