A Palm Beach County man was arrested Saturday for allegedly stealing election computer equipment, authorities said.
John Panicci faces charges of taking damaged computer equipment and electronic devices.
Detectives said the incident occurred on March 19 during a training session at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office for volunteers preparing for the March 24 election. During the session, Panicci allegedly stole an encrypted access key from a voter registration terminal.
Authorities noted that the key was programmed for the training databases only. However, there were concerns that if someone were able to reverse engineer the encryption, it could potentially be used on an actual voter registration kiosk for malicious purposes.
Following the identification of Panicci as a suspect, investigators obtained an arrest and search warrant and took him into custody at his home. Detectives recovered the stolen items along with a large number of electronic and digital storage devices.
Panicci was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail and is scheduled to appear before a judge Sunday morning.
