Medical Devices May Have Been Stolen from Military Facility

The federal government is investigating whether a federal employee took medical equipment from a naval facility in Bethesda, MD, and attempted to sell them online, according to a report by NBC News.

Nancy Crotti

At least $18,000 worth of medical "dummies," tubing devices and electronics were reported stolen in December from the Naval Support Activities Washington complex, the oldest naval installation in the United States. In an affidavit, the agent reported finding some of the missing items listed for sale on eBay.com under an account of a training facility employee at the base, according to a search warrant application obtained by NBC.

Court filings revealed that the devices had been stored in an unsecured storage locker in a military health care training facility at the compound. An officer at the facility, known as Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, recognized one of the laryngoscopes offered on the website "due to unique broken piece of plastic on the device," the network reported. Federal investigators subpoenaed eBay to obtain information about the seller, who still had items posted on the site yesterday, NBC said.

The National Criminal Investigative Service, which is looking into the matter, declined to comment to the news network, citing the ongoing investigation. The complex also includes Walter Reed Medical Center and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs facilities.

Tenants of the facility include Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and a number of other medical buildings.

While reports of stolen medical devices are rare, they occasionally make headlines as do reports of stolen intellectual property for medical devices.

For instance, in 2014, we reported on an engineer who had previously worked at Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BD; Franklin Lakes, NJ) and C.R. Bard Inc. (Murray Hill, NJ) who admitted to stealing trade secrets from the two global medical technology companies.

Also in 2014, we wrote about a GE Healthcare engineer who stole millions of files from his employer and sent them to China. And then in 2015, we reported that another engineer had admitted to stealing trade secrets from Boston Scientific related to the company's Mustang catheter, which he helped develop. 

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