Victor Papagno had two loves, federal prosecutor say: computers and stealing.
For the Navy, it was a devastating combination.
Over 10 years, authorities said, the computer technician with obsessive-compulsive disorder ran one of the biggest computer theft scams in local history. He stole more than 19,000 pieces of computer equipment from the offices of the Naval Research Laboratory in Southwest Washington.
The loot took up so much space that Papagno built a 2,775-square-foot garage to store it all. It cost the Navy more than $150,000 to inventory the stash of keyboards, monitors, floppy disks, hard drives, cables, batteries and a device to make security badges. When investigators came to haul the equipment away from Papagno's Charles County home, they needed an 18-wheeler.
He got away with stealing computer components from a secure Navy facility by walking out the front door with the booty in boxes -- an average of five items a day over a decade. The Navy never caught on. The tip that brought him down last year came from his estranged wife, authorities said.
The 40-year-old computer specialist, who pleaded guilty in October to theft of government property, was sentenced yesterday to 18 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman. The judge said he was disturbed by the "quantity, the value and the sensitivity" of the stolen items and ordered Papagno to repay the $159,000 it cost the Navy to retrieve and inventory the goods.
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