Article content

A former federal public servant who stole nearly $1 million in computer parts from the Department of National Defence and sold some of them on the classified website Kijiji has pleaded guilty to fraud and breach of trust.

Andrew Heggaton, 33, was a civilian member of the Canadian Forces Crypto Support Unit when he ordered the hard drives, motherboards, processors and graphics cards he would later steal over a four-year period between June 2011 and March 2015.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or 'Things just spiralled out of control': Public servant steals nearly $1M in computer parts, sells them on Kijiji Back to video

Heggaton’s scam began unravelling in September 2014 when his superiors in the crypto support unit, also known as CFCSU, started getting invoices for graphic cards they didn’t normally buy, and hard drives and processors that were usually purchased as part of larger orders of complete computer systems. Worse yet, no one in the CFCSU could find the items they were being billed for.

Two of the invoices — one for $61,647.46 and the other for $76,405.31 — indicated the items had been shipped to Heggaton.

“When questioned by his supervisors about this, Mr. Heggaton provided some nonsensical explanations,” said prosecutor Bruce Lee-Shanok following Heggaton’s guilty plea earlier this year. “He stated those two orders were in fact official government orders, however the authorization forms attached to the orders had signatures that weren’t recognizable by anyone in the unit.”