Brickbat: A Game of Telephone
(Elmer Grubbs/guteksk7/Dreamstime)
A former employee of the U.S. House of Representatives was arrested and indicted in federal court for stealing government-issued cellphones worth more than $150,000 while he worked as a system administrator for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Prosecutors say Christopher Southerland ordered 240 extra phones to be shipped to his home and sold most of them to a pawn shop, even telling a pawn shop employee to break the phones down into parts to avoid detection. The theft was uncovered when he sold a phone on eBay, and the buyer called a number preloaded in the phone, which went to Congress' tech support desk. That call sparked an investigation by the FBI and U.S. Capitol Police.
