Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
UH security guard A University of Hawaii-Manoa security guard has been arrested for allegedly stealing school computers and selling them over the Internet.
arrested in theft
of computers
The 32-year-old security guard
allegedly sold UH property
online at eBayBy Jaymes K. Song
Star-BulletinThe 32-year-old Kailua man was arrested yesterday by plainclothes officers and has been cooperating with the investigation, police said.
He was booked for second-degree burglary but released pending further investigation.
The suspect, who has no prior criminal history, admitted to at least 10 other campus thefts, police said. His arrest was the result of a two-year investigation by Detectives Glenn Muramoto and Kerry Finuff.
eBay Inc., a California-based online auction house, and Apple Computer Inc. helped police recover a stolen Apple Powerbook G-3 laptop computer in Kansas City, Kan., Muramoto said. That recovery led to the suspect.
A second stolen computer was found in his home yesterday.
"Right now we're doing all the background research ... finding his personal activity on eBay," Muramoto told the Star-Bulletin today.
Other suspects could be involved, he said, adding that the security guard is not the only one who has been stealing computers from the university.
Computers "in the hundreds" -- from laptops to desktops -- have been stolen from UH classrooms over the past couple of years, he said.
The last theft, allegedly involving the security guard, occurred the weekend of Sept. 15 in the biomedical science building.
But other thefts have occurred "all over the campus," Muramoto said. Most of the thefts involved one or two computers and occurred over weekends. In most cases there were no signs of forced entry, and no one building has been hit the most, he said.
No suspects have been arrested for those thefts.
A UH campus security official confirmed the arrest. He referred other questions to UH officials who could not be reached for comment. He also estimated there have been only about 50 thefts of computers or computer components in the past two years.