Ex-library employee allegedly stole, sold $1.3 million worth of printer toner

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A former library employee has been accused of stealing and selling over a million dollars worth of printer toner over the course of 12 years.

Randall Whited, who used to work at the Austin Public Library (APL) in Texas, United States, “fraudulently bought and stole at least $1.3 million (around P63 million) in printer toner and resold it online,” Austin government’s Office of the City Auditor said in its October investigative report.

Whited used to have access to 10 library credit cards and was in charge of purchasing supplies for the library, including printer toner.

Authorities found via the credit cards’ purchase history that he purchased at least $1.5 million worth of printer toner from October 2007 and July 2019. The APL, however, only needed $150,000 worth of printer toner during that timeframe, a tenth of the amount Whited purchased.

Plenty of evidence pointed to Whited having sold the excess printer toners to online resellers. For one, he visited an online reseller’s website at least once using his city computer, which also had a spreadsheet file detailing shipping information to another online toner reseller.

Whited has also been caught by security cameras several times carrying boxes of toner from his office to the garage, with one footage actually showing him putting these into the trunk of his car.

While other APL staff claimed that Whited regularly delivered printer toner to other APL branches, the investigation noted that APL has other staff responsible for such a task.

Aside from purchasing excess printer toner, authorities found that Whited also used the city’s credit cards to purchase personal items worth at least $18,000 (around P872,000). These items include robotic vacuums, video games, virtual reality headsets and a drone, among others.

He also used the credit cards to purchase at least $140,000 worth of items from two online retailers from February 2017 to July 2019, although the government was not able to determine precisely how many of the items were fraudulent “due to poor inventory practices at APL and inadequate purchasing records.”

Whited has already been convicted several times of theft and burglary back in the 1980s and 1990s, as per NBC affiliate KXAN yesterday, Oct. 5.

A grand jury in early September indicted Whited on theft charges, according to the report. He was booked into the Hays County Jail on Sept. 22. JB

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