California man admitted to resale of nearly 1,000 MacBooks stolen

According to the latest report, a California man confessed to the resale of nearly 1,000 MacBooks stolen by Tesla and famous university employees and will be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

It’s unclear which specific models of MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro were involved, but each model was stolen by staff at different agencies. Philip James of Folsom, Calif., admitted knowing the devices were stolen from Tesla, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley.

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According to Market Watch, Philip James purchased stolen devices from multiple people between October 2015 and June 2020. Court documents say he paid between $1,600 and $2,250 for each device.

Moreover, Cory Beck, who works in Tesla’s IT department, reportedly stole about 100 units from Tesla. Jonas Jarut stole another 100 from UC Berkeley. Eric Castenada and Patricia Castenada stole about 800 from Stanford. The latter works in the university’s Faculty of Humanities, where her work includes procuring computers.

Jarut, Beck, and Castendadas previously pleaded guilty in a related but separate case. Philip James will be sentenced in July this year and the charges at the time mean he could be jailed for 10 years. As part of his guilty plea, he has now agreed to pay Tesla and the universities a total of $2.765 million in damages.

(via)