A former Navy computer systems administrator who stole more than 19,000 pieces of equipment from the Naval Research Laboratory doesn’t owe the lab the $160,000 in restitution a judge ordered him to pay, a federal appeals court ruled.
Victor Papagno Jr. pleaded guilty in October 2008 to stealing 19,709 pieces of computer equipment from the Southwest Washington lab between 1997 and 2007.
When he was sentenced, a judge in U.S. District Court for D.C. ordered Papagno to pay $159,183 in restitution to the laboratory. That’s how much the Navy spent to conduct an internal investigation into the thefts.
But that spending did not constitute “necessary … expenses incurred during participation in the investigation or prosecution of the offense,” a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled this week. Restitution can only be ordered for such “necessary” expenses, the appeals court said.
In the panel’s opinion, Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the lab’s investigation wasn’t needed and the lab “was not participating in the criminal investigation” when it conducted its internal review.
“The costs of an internal investigation cannot be said to be necessary if the investigation was neither required nor requested by criminal investigators or prosecutors,” Kavanaugh wrote.
The NRL is the research lab for the Navy and Marine Corps. It conducts scientific research and develops technologies. Papagno joined the lab in 1989 and resigned in August 2008, after the theft charges surfaced.
The NRL didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Papagno, who was sentenced to a year-and-a-half in prison and was released last June, couldn’t be reached.
He stole equipment valued at about $120,000, according to plea documents. Those pieces included monitors, laptops, hard drives, storage discs, power supplies, printers, cables and other items, court documents say.
It remains “unclear” why the lab devoted nearly $160,000 to the 3,500-hour investigation, Kavanaugh wrote.
The lab had initially estimated the supplies as worth up to $1.6 million, but later acknowledged that much of the equipment wasn’t new when it was stolen.
Authorities were tipped off by a phone call from Papagno’s now-ex-wife, who filed a domestic violence complaint against him. That complaint was later dropped.
