Wife's call leads authorities to huge Navy crime

After Victor Papagno Jr. was arrested on a domestic violence charge in August 2007, his wife, Andrea, told his bosses at the Naval Research Laboratory that she wanted his work stuff out of the house, federal sources said.

Navy officials didn't know what she was talking about.

When they showed up at the Papagno's Calvert County home, authorities found a crime scene: 19,709 pieces of stolen computer equipment from the Navy lab - hard drives, CDs, zip drives, floppy disks - worth up to $1.6 million, according to court documents and Navy officials.

Papagno, 40, the computer administrator for the Navy research lab, had accumulated so much hardware that some of the boxes had to be stored at neighbors' homes, sources close to the investigation told The Examiner.

Victor Papagno is scheduled to appear today in a federal courtroom in the District to plead guilty to theft of government property. His attorney, Thomas Joseph Kelly Jr., said the plea agreement was "fragile" and he could not comment about the case.

The NRL, the research lab for the Navy and Marine Corps located on Overlook Avenue in Southwest Washington, conducts scientific research and develops technologies. The lab is credited with the development of radar, the proposal for the first nuclear submarine, and the creation of the satellite system that provided the basis for the Global Positioning System.

NRL spokesman Dick Thompson said that no secret technological information had been breached in the computer equipment theft.

A review found that the private information of 14 employees and contractors who worked at the laboratory from 1998 to 2002 had been found on CDs or zip drives, and those people were contacted, Thompson said.

According to charging documents, from 1997 to 2007, Papagno took the equipment home for his own personal use and for family and friends, court documents said.

Papagno, who started working for NRL in 1989, resigned on Aug. 20, Thompson said.

That was three days after his arrest for domestic violence. His wife dropped the charges.

(Copyright 2008 by The Examiner. All Rights Reserved.)