Security Guard Charged In Larceny

A campus security guard allegedly stole a laptop and an electronic tablet from a pair of undergraduates last fall.

Stephen Evans, a supervisor with the private security company Securitas, was arraigned on April 7 for one count of larceny for allegedly stealing a MacBook Pro laptop valued at $2,000 and an Apple iPad valued at $500. A non-guilty plea was entered for Evans at the Cambridge District Court.

On Oct. 11, two undergraduates reported that their laptops had been stolen from inside their back packs in room B04 in the basement of Holworthy Hall. The students had gone to eat between 12 a.m. and 2:15 a.m., leaving their bags behind. The laptops were the only items stolen, according to the incident report.

On Dec. 12, Harvard University Police Department officers responded to a report of stolen property from the B-entryway of Kirkland House. A student had come back to his room that morning to find his laptop and iPad missing. According to the incident report, there were no signs of forced entry into either the entryway or the student’s room.

Using logs of IP addresses and device-specific Media Access Control addresses aggregated by the University, HUPD was able to determine that a stolen laptop was being used at the Securitas guard station by Wigglesworth.

Using this information, along with swipe data from the incident in Kirkland in December, police later identified Evans as a possible suspect in the case.

On Feb. 8, HUPD officers received an email alert that the targeted MAC address had entered the network. They arrived at the guard station where Evans was supervising but had stepped out.

The officers located Evans’ car in Allston and waited until he arrived after finishing his shift to search it. In it they found one of the laptops that had been stolen and an iPad.

Evans returned to the station with the officers and agreed to be interviewed.

Evans said that the laptop in his possession was purchased from a man at the T-stop in Harvard Square for $400. He said the iPad was purchased for $150.

But later while being interviewed, Evans admitted to stealing the MacBook Pro from a common room in Holworthy Hall. He also said he found the iPad in Kirkland House and “picked it up and just checked it out ... to see how an iPad works.” Evans added that he intended to return the iPad to its owner by leaving it in a room in the basement of Kirkland House.

The officers then removed the iPad from Evans’ bag and identified the scratched serial number to match the number to the iPad that was reported stolen from Kirkland House.

By Feb. 21, only two electronics were recovered from the two incidents where a total of four items were stolen.

At the end of the same interview, Evans denied knowledge of the other two devices—both MacBook Pro laptops—in the two cases, stating that he did not have an accomplice in the larcenies and that he had not passed on any of the items to anyone else.

“I did not get greedy like that,” Evans said, according to the incident report. “I did something I was not raised to do but I did not [take the other laptops].”

—Staff writer Xi Yu can be reached at xyu@college.harvard.edu.