Redwood City Siblings Sentenced For Stealing 800 Stanford Laptops: DOJ

REDWOOD CITY, CA — Two Redwood City residents were sentenced to federal prison this week for their involvement in a MacBook theft ring that cost the university millions of dollars, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Monday.

Patricia Castaneda, 38, pleaded guilty to stealing Macbook laptops she was responsible for ordering for students and staff from Stanford University’s School of Humanities and Sciences.
Starting in 2009 or 2010, Castaneda began stealing Macbooks she ordered, and selling them for cash, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Initially, she began selling them to a man she met on Craigslist.

Starting around February 2016, Castaneda began giving the laptops to her brother, Eric Castaneda, to sell to a man named Philip James, who sold and shipped the laptops to buyers all over the country, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Castenada is estimated to have stolen approximately 800 Macbooks, at a total cost of $4 million to Stanford University. In Sacramento Monday, U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller sentenced Patricia to 33 months in prison, and ordered her to pay over $4 million in restitution.

Eric Castaneda was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay $2.2 million in restitution.

On April 11, Philip James of Folsom pleaded guilty to transporting stolen laptops across state lines. He was ordered to pay almost over $2.2 million to Stanford, over $256,000 to an unnamed company in Palo Alto, and $209,057 to UC Berkeley. He will be sentenced in July, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.