Former college basketball player Brad Stephenson was recently indicted for stealing more than $80,000 worth of merchandise from Nike.
“According to court documents, Stephenson learned that Nike provides elite-athlete accounts to certain clients, which allows them to order items without paying for them,” writes Softpedia’s Eduard Kovacs. “Somehow, he managed to access 12 such accounts, which he used — over the course of five months — to make orders worth $81,419. To avoid raising suspicion, the asked for the merchandise to be shipped to various locations in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Arizona.”
“A few months ago, the Secret Service showed up at his door with a search warrant,” writes ZDNet’s Emil Protalinski. “A search of the residence resulted in agents finding and seizing 231 pieces of Nike merchandise which had been fraudulently obtained through elite-athlete accounts. The value of the items recovered was only $17,057. Stephenson gave a lot of the gear away as gifts and he even sold a small number of items on eBay, according to court documents. The rest he kept.”
“He was charged with computer fraud, but it’s impossible to tell what his sentence will be, as he has struck a plea deal with Nike and will help them patch the hole that allowed him to do all this,” writes Help Net Security’s Zeljka Zorz.
