Ex-IT director guilty in stealing $731,000 in computers
Pocketed nearly $300,000 from it
A former information technology director for news agency Thomason Reuters was convicted on theft and related charges Thursday for stealing nearly 600 computers from his former employer and selling them online.
Richard D. Webb Jr., 54, of the 300 block of Kauffman Street in Philadelphia, was found guilty of theft by deception, theft by unlawful taking, receiving stolen property and criminal use of a communication facility following a jury trial before Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony Scanlon this week. The jury deliberated for about three hours Thursday before rendering a verdict.
Webb had worked as an IBM subcontractor for ARTEC IT Solutions out of a Thomson Reuters satellite site at 2 Baltimore Pike in Media from January 2018 to May 2019.
Thomson Reuters Internal Audit Manager Todd Curtis said he opened a fraud investigation into a reported 573 missing “developer” laptops valued at about $1,400 each in May 2019 that had been shipped to Media from the company’s distribution center in Eagan, Minnesota.
Curtis told Assistant District Attorney Liz Schneider, head of the Economics Crime Unit, that he was able to identify the serial numbers, configurations and shipping dates of each computer through the company’s “Service Now” system, which allows users to request hardware to be delivered. The software also allows users to make specific comments and provides shipping tracking numbers.
Curtis found that Webb had made 95% of the requests for hardware during his time at the Media office, totaling 613 computers, and that he included notes like “please package for freight elevator,” indicating these were bulk shipments.
“The process should have been, if you order in bulk, that you would go back and you would fill in the individual employees that received the computers,” Curtis testified. “So if you ordered 10 computers, that data should have been recorded in Service
Now, so it would track and see each employee, what laptop they received, and we would know their serial number and we could track it. That wasn’t entered in there.”
Thomson Reuters Senior Director of Technology Jameson Sarno testified that the company typically tried to make laptops for employees last three to five years and that the Media office would not be receiving bulk laptop shipments, only individual computers for new hires.
Sarno estimated there were about 75 people at that location. Curtis put it closer to 80, with maybe another 20 working from home.
Former Media Office Manager Shermika Lewis said that location would typically require two or three new laptops per month for new hires, not 20 or 30, and that shipments would come in typically before noon Monday through Friday. The workday at the office was from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., she said, never weekends or evenings.
Curtis said the difference between the 613 ordered laptops and 573 missing would fit Lewis’s estimation of needing about two new laptops per month. He valued the missing inventory at $731,172.
Curtis also reviewed “badge swipe” records for Webb to gain access to the office and found that on the dates when bulk orders of computers were delivered to Media, 90% of Webb’s entry records for the building were outside working hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and many took place at night.
He pointed to one Saturday in March 2019 when Webb had swiped in between 5:36 a.m. and 3:19 p.m. The office had received a shipment of 20 laptops the day before, Curtis said.
Webb’s ordering patterns were also “drastically higher” than other Thomson Reuters sites, Curtis said, with an 8 to 1 ratio of computers to employees versus about 0.5 to 1 laptops to employees at other locations.
“We looked at 10 other comparable locations,” he said. “Many of them had a much higher number of employees and they had far (fewer) laptops shipped there during the same period.”
Paul Capellini, senior director of Thomson Reuters physical security services, testified that he did a site visit to the Media office in May 2019 and could not locate a single one of the laptops ordered.
Police testimony
Delaware County Detective Michele Deery said she executed a search warrant at Webb’s home June 13, 2019, but found none of the missing laptops there, either.
Deery spoke with Webb at that time and he admitted to ordering the laptops, which he acknowledged was a “crazy” number, but said he was servicing about 6,000 employees that he would build computers for, then ship them out.
Curtis said Webb was not servicing other locations during the period between January 2018 and May 2019, however, and that he had only sent four shipments to three employees using the company’s FedEx account during that timeframe.
Deery additionally took Webb’s phone when he was arrested and Curtis said texts found in that data referencing sales to third parties correlated closely to model numbers, quantities and dates that equipment had been ordered from Eagan, sometimes on the same day Webb had placed an order with Thomson Reuters.
In particular, Curtis noted there were invoices referenced in texts from Webb to a “Chen” and “International Chen” numbered 37 through 54 between July 2018 and May 2019. He had no data for texts between January 2018 and mid-July of that year or information on invoices numbered 1 through 36, but the invoices he did see correlated exactly with 309 of 310 laptops Eagan had sent Media.
Deery said the “Chen” number saved in Webb’s phone was a “spoof number,” meaning it was a mask
for another phone number, and she could find no information at all for the “International Chen” number.
But Deery was able to pull banking information for Webb that indicated he was receiving hefty sums from his PayPal account monthly. In March 2019, she said, Webb received 14 deposits totaling $52,870, 10 of which were from PayPal and accounted for $49,000.
He received another $43,171 in April 2019, $40,000 of which came from PayPal; $30,884 in May, of which $27,000 was attributed to PayPal deposits; and just 11 cents in June, after the scheme was discovered.
In all, Webb had received $290,000 from PayPal for the relevant period, Deery said.
Webb did not testify and defense attorney Tom Kenney called no witnesses.
Webb had been free on $5,000 cash bail since October. Judge Scanlon revoked bail Thursday and set sentencing for May 18 pending a presentence investigation and psychological evaluation.