Posted on 06/20/2013 7:10:44 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
DNC: Nearly $500,000 of equipment was lost or stolen in Charlotte
To stage last year’s Democratic National Convention, the local host committee raised millions of dollars, much of it for computers, phones and other communication devices.
Now it appears a sizable amount of that equipment was lost, stolen – or perhaps kept by the staffers it had been assigned to.
The Democratic National Convention Committee said it recently sent the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department a spreadsheet detailing $496,000 worth of missing equipment. CMPD created an incident report in May.
Among the missing items: MacBook Pro laptops, iPads, iPod Nanos, computer printers, and BlackBerrys.
“It’s commonplace for stuff to go missing,” said Joseph Sandler, a Washington, D.C., attorney handling media calls about the issue for the DNC host committee. “This is very typical, even though we have an inventory system.”
Sandler said he thought the Charlotte losses were higher than usual because of planners prepping two sites for the three-day convention: Time Warner Cable Arena and Bank of America Stadium. President Barack Obama was supposed to deliver his acceptance speech at the football stadium, but the threat of thunderstorms moved the last night of the DNC back to the arena.
Sandler said some of the items may have been inadvertently kept by DNC staffers who had used the equipment for months before the convention. But he said he believes some of the equipment was stolen by people not involved with the convention.
“Some of it may have been stolen, but we don’t know exactly what happened,” he said.
The spreadsheet given to police lists $3.9 million in equipment, with most of it accounted for.
For example, the document says the DNCC had 600 BlackBerry Bold 990s. It shows 383 were returned and 217 are missing. Amount of the losses: $54,250.
A total of 841 pieces of equipment are missing, according to the DNCC.
In its police report, CMPD lists most of the equipment, including the BlackBerrys, as “lost” rather than “stolen.”
CMPD couldn’t be reached for comment.
Sandler said he does not think the Charlotte police will be able to find much of the equipment.
“Probably not,” he said. “Except to the extent if there were a significant number of things stolen and there is a lead they can pursue.”
The local host committee for the DNC was tasked with raising roughly $36 million to stage the convention, but the fundraising efforts fell short.
In May, Duke Energy announced that it would absorb the $10 million line of credit it gave to the host committee. Because the company could claim the loss as a business expense, its shareholders would only cover $6 million of the loan.
Dan Murrey, who chaired the host committee, said his employees returned most of the items they were using.
“On my team, we got almost every piece back,” he said. “But I don’t know if that was clear on the (Democratic National Convention Committee) side.”
He said that, in the past, technology companies had not asked for many items to be returned after conventions.
“But this time they did,” Murray said.
He said filing the police report with CMPD was a necessary step toward possibly filing an insurance claim for the items.
He said that on the last night of the convention, a number of pieces of equipment vanished, suggesting they were deliberately stolen.
“But it wasn’t like someone backed up a tractor-trailer and loaded up a bunch of stuff,” he said.
Organizers of the Charlotte, N.C., convention have filed a police report for lost and stolen electronics, some of which they appear to have valued at as much as 62 times the listed market prices.
A reportedly stolen 13-inch MacBook Pro laptop? $75,537. The price listed on the Apple website is $1,199. A lost iPhone? $30,503. A lost Blackberry? $54,250.
[...]
Other items reported to have gone missing at the convention included two iPads worth around $15,000 each, laptops listed at $40,000, $34,000 and $25,000 each, and other miscellaneous items worth far more than their list price.
The report claimed that 40 items were reported lost and one item – the most highly valued one, the $75,000 MacBook Pro – was stolen.
[...]
The report was filed almost eight months after the convention, when the losses supposedly took place.
The cost of the 41 missing electronics totaled $465,142.97, according to the police report.
That averaged $11,344 per item.
[The local host committee for the DNC was tasked with raising roughly $36 million to stage the convention, but the fundraising efforts fell short.
In May, Duke Energy announced that it would absorb the $10 million line of credit it gave to the host committee. Because the company could claim the loss as a business expense, its shareholders would only cover $6 million of the loan. ]
Taking it off the top and bottom ? The DNC and OBAMA didn’t pay their BILLS, then FORWARDED the BILLS to the SHAREHOLDERS of DUKE ENERGY , and now they want to scam the insurance claims for the stolen Items they didn’t pay for ?
That would have been the 'insured value', not the cost. The DNC didn't pay a cent for them. Duke Energy and their stockholders did.
I doubt you can insure items for many times their actual cost, though.
The rat party has to supply the ground troops
with sophistacted comm equipment for the comming
struggles somehow. Then they get to write it all
off. What a scam.
Was “lost or stolen” much like the ever popular “jobs created or saved” Just think of how maney louis viton bags or heroin could have been gotten with this haul, frig the obamaphones man! When’s the next rally?
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