Copy machine thieves at UNLV hit jackpot

Jennifer Knight

Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2002 | 11:08 a.m.

UNLV officials always try to watch their pennies -- but apparently one of the university's departments did not keep a close eye on its loose change.

University police and the state attorney general's office are investigating the theft of $48,600 in quarters, dimes and dollars bills at the college.

For more than a year, the theft from campus copiers and change machines went without notice because proper accounting controls were ignored, University of Nevada, Las Vegas officials said.

"Certainly several months went by before this was picked up," said Tony Flores, UNLV's vice president of finance. "There were already policies in place when this happened. They just weren't enforced."

Missing money was first reported on Nov. 13 by a reprographics department employee at UNLV. Reprographics collects and maintains all coins and cash deposited in copy, change and debit card machines around campus.

The complaint unleashed a string of investigations that began with internal auditors and led to UNLV police and attorney general's office inquiries.

After months of surveillance, UNLV police arrested former student and reprographics worker Brian A. Barlow-Clark, charging him with grand larceny.

But charges against Barlow-Clark account for only about $1,800. The remaining $46,800 was still unaccounted for.

Police turned over their findings to the attorney general's office, where an investigation of the entire reprographics department is ongoing, said Greg Smith, deputy chief of investigations.

Following the money -- especially when it involves change -- is not as easy as it seems, said Michael Murray, UNLV police deputy chief.

"That's a lot of change," Murray said. "A long time ago, when you wanted to get rid of that kind of change, it was a fairly tedious process. Now they have machines, and it's easy enough to get rid of all that change without having a record of it."

And as investigations charged on this past year, the thefts did too.

By December 2001, two months after the initial discovery, the amount lost added up to an estimated $33,721.

UNLV officials decided to step up security measures in an effort to stop the thefts. All the locks on machines were changed, padlocks and bars were placed on other machines and two surveillance cameras were installed.

But the thefts continued -- and the thieves became more bold, Flores said. In one month, six machines were broken into.

By February another $5,433 went missing, and in April 2002 another $9,485 went missing.

Damage to machines is now estimated at $23,000, bringing the total loss to $71,639.

Murray said police are still waiting for a crime lab report that could provide more leads on who might have stolen the money, and the attorney general's investigation of the thefts is expected to wrap up next month.

In the meantime, questions remain on who took the money and how they got away with it.

"There are people who sometimes don't follow the (accounting) processes in place," Flores said. "That's what makes us vulnerable sometimes. But keep in mind a lot of these (incidents) were vandalism, and no accounting measures in place are going to prevent that."