A man from California has pleaded guilty to reselling nearly 1,000 MacBooks – together worth millions of dollars – that had been stolen by employees from Tesla, and major universities including Stanford University and the University of California, Berkley.
35-year-old Philip James from Folsom will be handed a jail sentence of up to 10 years, having admitted he was aware the Apple laptops had been stolen when he took them from employees at the schools and the electric car manufacturer, and sold them on to out-of-state buyers.
According to a MarketWatch report, federal prosecutors had accused James of buying the stolen MacBooks from several people between October 2015 and June 2020. Court documents stated that he paid between $1,600 and $2,250 for each device.
As part of his guilty plea, James has agreed to pay restitution of nearly $2.3 million to Stanford, $256,000 to Tesla, and $209,000 to U.C. Berkeley. This is after the investigation concluded that James acquired 800 stolen computers from Stanford, 100 were stolen from Tesla, and another 100 were stolen from U.C. Berkeley.
James will learn his exact sentence in July.