US Customs supervisor busted for stealing hardware from Homeland Security PCs

According to a study from The Maine Wire, the FBI has arrested and charged Terry “Jiajia” Liu, a Customs and Border Protection supervisor based successful Calais, Maine, for theft and harm to authorities property. Liu allegedly stole machine hardware, including Intel 14th Generation Raptor Lake Refresh processors, representation modules, and difficult drives, from astatine slightest 46 Department of Homeland Security computers crossed 3 Maine separator facilities. They replaced the stolen parts pinch inferior hardware and exchanged the stolen instrumentality done Newegg’s trade-in programme for shop credit.

Liu’s charismatic responsibilities were constricted to information-technology support, truthful they did not person entree to modify immoderate authorities computer. Port Director Theodore Cummings made the regularisation abundantly clear to Liu successful a written order: “Please do not move immoderate computers aliases machine parts.” However, criminals seldom listen.

Hidden surveillance cameras captured Liu opening authorities computers and swapping hardware during the midnight shift. The perpetrator would return the systems to a training room to perpetrate the crime. One camera signaling showed Liu utilizing a screwdriver to scrape thermal paste disconnected a processor and installing a replacement spot successful 1 system. Meanwhile, different signaling caught Liu removing a representation module from a strategy and storing it successful their table drawer.

According to the affidavit, investigators recovered that thirty-nine computers had their processors replaced, six machines pinch representation modules swapped, and 8 had difficult thrust changes. The original systems utilized Raptor Lake Refresh chips but were later discovered to person older hardware, sometimes downgraded to Pentium chips. Beyond the processor swap, different computers had little representation and retention capacity than their original configurations.

Instead of trying to waste the stolen hardware connected the unfastened second-hand market, Liu utilized a little conspicuous approach: Newegg’s Trade-In program. According to investigators, Liu sent 13 emails betwixt a individual relationship and an charismatic CBP email reside containing shipping labels and trade-in receipts for processor models matching the missing components from the authorities computers.

The Newegg trade-in offers varied betwixt $200 and $210 per processor. According to the transaction records from the U.S. retailer, Liu traded successful Core i7 Raptor Lake Refresh chips 16 times complete 14 months, from May 2025 to July 2026. Investigators besides recovered 3 $200 credits from Newegg successful Liu's American Express records.

During an interview, Liu confessed to replacing hardware successful the authorities computers pinch lower-performing parts bought connected Amazon and Newegg. They besides acknowledged submitting the government-owned parts to Newegg's Trade-In program. At first, Liu claimed their actions were motivated by a desire to amended the computers' capacity and really agelong machine repairs took. However, they later admitted that the changes resulted successful degraded performance.

Restoring the stolen hardware could costs astir $20,460, while afloat replacing each 46 compromised computers pinch balanced hardware would costs an estimated $105,800. However, further labour to configure each strategy for authorities usage will thrust the measure moreover higher.

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