Warrants Issued for 4 Suspects in UCI High-Tech Thefts

Arrest warrants were issued Friday for four current or former UC Irvine students who are suspected of breaking into dozens of university offices and stealing $120,000 in computer and electronic equipment through underground tunnels that link campus buildings.

The suspects, who are believed to have operated as a ring, were traced through witnesses who saw computers and other apparently stolen items in the suspects’ dorm rooms or apartments, and through classified ads offering computers for sale in Orange County, Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, according to Bruce Patterson, a district attorney supervising deputy.

One suspect has agreed through his attorney to surrender, Patterson said. Two others are rumored to have fled to Canada, and police have information on the whereabouts of the fourth, he said.

The suspects are Paul Wesley Granados, 21, of San Jose and Henry Theodore Yeh, 21, of Ridgecrest, both engineering students; Eric Howard Shay, 20, of La Crescenta, a social ecology major, and Robert Fan, 20, of Cerritos, a former UCI student. All four are charged with four counts of burglary, one count of grand theft and one count of receiving stolen property.

“They would go through the tunnels underneath campus and surface in different buildings,” Patterson alleged Friday, adding, “Then they would go into unlocked offices or use keys to go into locked areas and steal computer equipment and other items of value.”

The warrants follow an investigation by university police and the district attorney’s office. Patterson said the continuing investigation may lead to charges against additional suspects who may have aided the four in selling stolen goods.

The burglars, who struck mainly during holiday breaks and over long weekends, entered and escaped through a network of 10-foot-wide utility tunnels, which provide access for repair and maintenance of electrical, cooling and other systems, investigators allege. Police found an empty beer can propping open a door leading to the underground tunnel system on Dec. 27, when workers discovered that nearly $20,000 worth of equipment had been stolen from the Social Sciences Tower over the Christmas weekend.

University Police Lt. William Miller described the thieves as “very bright people” who consistently stole the most expensive computer equipment, often passing over less-marketable brands or components.

The thefts, which occurred on 14 occasions beginning in February, 1988, in the Social Sciences Tower, Adminstration Hall and the Graduate School of Management, ended after an April news story about the ring. The suspects are believed to have left the Irvine area a short time later, Patterson said.

Those whose offices were burglarized included Dennis Aigner, dean of the Graduate School of Business Management; Dennis Galligani, assistant vice chancellor of academic affairs, and Kathleen Kunz, finance director for the Office of University Advancement.

In addition to the stolen computers, which have not been recovered, valuable research data also was stolen and may never be replaced, investigators said. At the social sciences word-processing center, where thieves struck in May, 1988, and again last Thanksgiving, several computers and duplicate discs stored in the same room were taken. Professors and researchers who reported thefts also complained that they had lost months of work and, in some cases, one-of-a-kind computer files.