In the late ‘90s, office drama came on floppy disks… and sometimes felony charges.

So when a government librarian found a stack of pricey AutoCAD software missing, she tracked the culprit down in record time using a sloppy eBay listing.

So when the thief came back to work, little did they know the cops were just waiting to swoop in to take them away.

You’ll want to keep reading for this one!

Brought the cops in when coworker stole from the library

I worked as the librarian in a very large government department.

One of the things I managed was all the software: boxes of disks (this was back in the late 90s), and the relevant licensing.

We had many boxes of AutoCAD, each set was worth several thousand each.

But then one day, the librarian noticed something strange.

One day I came in, and about 10 boxes were missing.

No one admitted to anything, and because of the cost I had to get the cops in, but the cops had no idea what to do about it (as per usual).

So she did some investigating of her own and found something surprising.

After some panic, I had a search online, and in particular on eBay (I used to sell a lot on eBay back in the day) and they were all listed there, about $1k per box.

The thief hadn’t even waited until the next day to list them!

The software wouldn’t have worked as they didn’t have the licenses, but there are workarounds for clever pirates.

The thief hadn’t covered their tracks near as well as they thought.

I used the ‘request seller’s details’ function and got the seller’s name and address.

That meant that in return they got all of my details as well, but can’t be avoided, that’s just the way eBay worked then.

I updated the police who came to work and waited by the thief’s desk.

So when the thief came back to work, they were in for quite a surprise.

The thief was in the library at opening, begging me not to call the cops and returning all of the boxes, but I just pointed to the cops who were waiting down the corridor for them.

Thank you for bringing all the evidence with you!

30 years they’d worked with the government in a super cushy, well-paying job, and now they were up on federal charges.

All for some second-hand software.

This doesn’t sound worth it in the slightest.

What did Reddit think?

If there’s one place you should never steal from it’s the place that writes your paychecks.

Although some employers don’t always give their employees the benefit of the doubt.

Stealing can cost you everything.

Government jobs offer some perks you just don’t want to lose.

Guess that eBay listing came with free shipping… right to jail!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.