A 46-year-old New Mexico woman has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing 3,000 iPods intended for the education of Native American students. Kristy Stock resold the devices for personal profit for more than $800,000 between 2013 and 2018.
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The decision was made by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland, and Stock is not the only one convicted as part of this operation. It appears that there was also a 36-year-old Colorado resident who was involved in the case. Saurabh Chawla, 36, bought stolen electronics and other goods and resold them on eBay and Amazon. Law enforcement raided his home in 2019, according to an earlier press release, and he also bought stolen iPads from another New Mexico school district.
Perhaps more importantly, Chawla teamed up with a Delaware FedEx distribution center manager named Joseph Kukta to steal packages before they reached customers like Walmart, with Chawla paying him $1.5 million, according to court documents. These thefts included shipments of Nike sneakers and devices from companies like Apple, Epson, Kenwood and Magellan, among other merchandise.
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"Kukta specifically selected packages that he believed, based on the package senders, contained high-quality electronics or other valuable merchandise that could be easily resold," another press release states.
It's unclear whether Stock, the school district employee, took iPods from Native American students who needed them or simply ones that were lying unused at the school. A court document says the iPods were purchased in bulk, with federal grant money, 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 him know what he could get” for “Black Friday,” but only managed to steal 30 devices that time, saying they needed to “keep some on hand until the end of the year for the students.”.
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Chawla was sentenced to 66 months in prison. Kukta to 42 months. James Bender of Maryland, who let Chawla use his eBay and PayPal accounts to sell the stolen goods, was sentenced to one year and one day. Chawla also agreed to give up assets worth at least $3.5 million, with the court seizing seven bank accounts, a 2013 Tesla Model S and forcing him to sell a two-story, five-bedroom home in Aurora, Colorado, that he bought with the fraud money. Kukta will pay $1.1 million and forfeit an additional $1.88 million in assets, according to the DA's office.
