A Burglary Foiled by Calls That Didn't Reach 911

[R.A. Hettinga]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/27/nyregion/27theft.html?pagewanted=print&position=>

The New York Times

November 27, 2004

A Burglary Foiled by Calls That Didn't Reach 911
By MARC SANTORA

he plan seemed simple enough. The building had been cased and the burglars
knew exactly what they wanted - advanced computer circuit panels that could
be sold on the black market for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The night before Thanksgiving, about 8 p.m., they entered the Verizon
building in White Plains undetected and set to work.

But as the criminals removed the panels, they soon triggered problems
across Westchester County. Most problematic, 911 systems across the region
began to crash. By the time some 150 panels were removed, roughly 25,000
people had lost 911 service.

 At 9:51 p.m., the White Plains Police received a call alerting them to the
fact that there might be a problem at the Verizon building. Still unaware
that burglars were at work inside, a patrol car rolled up to the site,
according to Inspector Daniel Jackson.

"Literally, the two guys were walking out the door," Mr. Jackson said. They
were carrying two large boxes when the officer shouted for them to stop.
The men dropped the stolen boxes, fled on foot and were eventually run down
by the officer and arrested, Mr. Jackson said.

The two men were identified in a criminal complaint as Larry D. Davis, 43,
of Brooklyn, and Gailican Phillips, 34 of Manhattan.

They have been charged with conspiracy to commit interstate shipment of
stolen property, a federal crime with a maximum sentence of five years in
jail, according to the complaint.

Mr. Jackson said that the burglary itself was not as disturbing as the
widespread effect it had on the 911 system.

The police are working with the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland
Security on the case. Terrorism has been ruled out as a possible motive.

Although the burglary occurred in the Verizon building, the stolen
equipment belonged to some half-dozen other telecommunications companies
that use the premises to house part of their operations. No Verizon
customers were affected, a company official said.

Dan Diaz Zapata, a spokesman for Verizon, said the building had many levels
of security - from video cameras to security badges to on-site guards - and
that the company was cooperating with local and federal authorities. Mr.
Zapata said that Verizon had redundancy capabilities built into its system
that would have prevented a theft of their own equipment from having such a
wide impact.

 Mr. Jackson said that there had been a theft at the building once before,
in 2003, and the police had reason to believe one of the two men involved
Wednesday also took part in that operation. He would not elaborate on other
details in that case. However, much less was stolen then.

According to the complaint filed in Southern District of New York, the
circuit boards ranged in value from $5,000 to $70,000 each and, all told,
were worth in excess of $1 million. The plan was to deliver them to an
unnamed co-conspirator who, in turn, planned to sell them to an unnamed
company in California, according to the complaint.

"There apparently is a strong, robust black market for this stuff," said a
federal law enforcement official, who insisted on anonymity for fear of
saying something that would compromise the investigation.

 There have been two other similar burglaries in New York City and New
Jersey in recent years, according to Mr. Jackson. Those thefts were much
smaller in scale.

 National Infrastructure Coordination Center of the Department of Homeland
Security is also working with local police because of concern that the 911
system could be relatively easily compromised.

After arresting the two men and photographing the stolen circuit panels,
the police returned them to the companies that owned them. Once
reinstalled, the 911 problems ended, and by 7 a.m. the system was back to
normal, Mr. Jackson said.

Police said the panels that were stolen were each about the size of a legal
pad and are used by telecommunications companies to transmit data and
connect calls. There is an industry standard for the panels and they can
easily be transferred from one computer to another.

Potential buyers of the panels on the black market range from small
telecommunications companies to overseas clients, the police said.

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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
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experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'