News

Thieves Make Off with 75 Computers at Purdue

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 01/08/10

Computer thievery has struck Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. University police are investigating the theft of 60 computers from an academic building computer lab after IT alerted them to the theft at 5:30 on a Saturday morning in late December. The IT staff told police that the computers had gone offline around 1:30 a.m. that same morning.

Later, IT also reported a group of computers going offline in another academic building that hosts an instructional computing lab. In that case, police discovered that 29 computers there had been placed in bubble wrap but hadn't been removed.

Earlier in December, 15 computers had gone missing from a fourth-floor room in an engineering building on campus.

Campus communications staff told a local Web site that police are increasing patrols and working with IT staff to implement new security measures. They also said that computer labs are normally locked unless somebody is staffing the room; however, the buildings where the labs are located are sometimes left open.