RANDOLPH COUNTY, N.C.-- The State Bureau of Investigation is looking into a hard drive incident at the Randolph County Sheriff's Office. A community watch-dog Facebook page, Judy Justice, published a post one a week ago raising concerns about a former captain at the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office. The post claims the ex-employee came back to his old workplace, took a hard drive out of a computer belonging to the Narcotics Division, and left.
- A hard drive from the Randolph County Sheriff's Office was taken and returned fried to IT by a former captain.
- The former captain's name is Bernie Maness, who currently works for the North Carolina Department of Insurance.
- Sheriff Robert graves requested the SBI to investigate.
Richard Allen is the man behind the Judy Justice page.
"I guess the hard drive could have been stolen, would be the worst case. Then you've got information out there that only Randolph County Sheriff's Office and probably the DA's Office knows what's on there. But I'm sure it's some pretty confidential information that they don't want disclosed,” Allen said.
Allen does not want to reveal his sources, but he claims the former employee then returned and took the hard drive to IT.
"And that hard drive ended up getting fried,” Allen explained. “From what I understand, there's a lot of vital information on there and it's uncommon for hard drives to just blow up or get fried."
"If information was lost on that hard drive that's important to our Sheriff's Department, anyone would have a concern with that. And we certainly are,” said Randolph County Manager Hal Johnson.
Johnson requested a timeline of events.
"I wanted to make sure that the proper process was followed and the equipment was accounted for,” Johnson said.
Johnson shared that timeline with Spectrum News reporter Ashley Claster.
"It appeared that initially there was a computer virus or something to that effect that had infected that particular computer and its program,” Johnson said. "They asked this officer to look at what was happening in that computer and try to address the issue."
Through open records requests, Claster discovered the former captain's name is Bernie Maness.
"Bernie Maness resigned his employment in good standing from the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office effective 8/23/18. He remains a reserve deputy for Randolph County Sheriff’s Office,” said the Sheriff’s Office in an email.
Through an open records request, Claster obtained the IT ticket that proves Maness did drop off the hard drive with IT saying it was fried. The IT department wrote there was an electrical odor coming from it.
"So the computer was returned back to our IT department,” Johnson explained. “The county has that now and has the hard drive disk, which is destroyed. And we've maintained the integrity of our equipment once we found that that had left the premises briefly."
Claster found out maness currently works for the North Carolina Department of Insurance. Claster reached out to the DOI and it told her via email, "Bernie Maness is an employee in good standing with NCDOI’s Criminal Investigation Division. After investigating, it was determined he was on official business when he responded to the Randolph County Sheriff’s office for assistance."
The Sheriff's Office also has proof of that. It sent Claster an email sent from a Sheriff's Office employee, Jason Chabot, to the DOI reading, “I am respectfully requesting Agent Bernie Maness, to assist our agency in completing computer forensics on an active internal investigation. This task shouldn’t take more than 1 day and the equipment is onsite. His former role in Professional Standards and his training in ICAC make him an ideal choice."
We now have evidence that proves Maness was asked to be here through all of the proper channels, both from the Sheriff's Office and Maness' current employer, the Department of Insurance. The question now is, why?
"They've got people more than capable to do whatever is needed with a computer, in my opinion,” Allen pointed out.
"We have tremendous capability here in Randolph County with our Information Technology and our staff that are qualified to do that. I'm sure in hindsight, they would have probably have approached that in a different way,” Johnson said.
Sheriff Robert Graves declined an on-camera interview, but told Claster over the phone, "Somebody outside of the Sheriff’s Office made the allegations. I feel they are false and unfounded. For the sake of transparency, I requested to have a third party look at it. I requested SBI to investigate on Tuesday."
Sheriff Graves declined to comment on what was on the computer in question or why Maness was approved to work on the computer and/or hard drive, as to not interfere with the SBI investigation.
Johnson said he has no timeline for when the SBI investigation will complete. He also said he does not know where Maness took the hard drive when he left the premises for a brief period.
The following is the full transcript of the timeline of events Johnson provided Claster:
To: Hal Johnson, County Manager
From: Michael Rowland, Information Technology Director
Date: November 13, 2018
Re: Sheriff’s Office PC Timeline
Below is a timeline of the events surrounding the PC referenced in the Judy Justice Facebook post. IT has no way of completely knowing what information was located on the drive or if it can be recovered. IT staff followed our normal procedures for handling a PC with a virus or a failed drive.
11/5/2018 15:10
A virus was detected on SUPC3977 which was assigned to Heather Tilley in the Sheriff’s Office. Brian Loflin, the Helpdesk Tech, created a ticket for the PC to be reimaged and forwarded the ticket to the Sheriff’s Office tech support queue.
11/6/2018 09:44
Sheri Martin, the Public Safety Specialist, received a text from Josh Santiago asking why Bernie Maness would be taking Heather Tilley’s PC. Sheri knew that Bernie Maness no longer worked for the Sheriff’s Office, so she asked me if he was allowed to work on county PCs.
11/6/2018 11:53
I called Jason Chabot at 11:53 and asked him if Bernie Maness had authority to take the PC. He responded that it was official and that the Sheriff had authorized him.
11/6/2018 12:04
Bernie Maness was given entry to IT. He delivered SUPC3977 to Brian Loflin on the Helpdesk. Bernie Maness stated that the drive was fried and asked if the Helpdesk staff could retrieve any data from it. He also stated that they were performing an internal investigation and had connected it to their forensics equipment. Bernie Maness left quickly after delivering the PC. Doug Moore, a Helpdesk tech, then removed the drive from the PC. It had a strong smell of an electrical surge. Doug Moore stated that the drive had the name Heather Tilley written on it with a Sharpie. Doug and the Helpdesk staff connected the drive to an external drive mount in order to read the drive. That proved unsuccessful. He then tried replacing the drive controller with a known good drive controller. This also proved unsuccessful. After exhausting all the available tools and methods at our disposal, the drive was considered a loss and was placed in the drive shredder bin to eventually be shredded. Justin Brubaker from the Sheriff’s Office came down later and asked if we had any kind of replacement PC that Heather Tilley could use until a new PC could be ordered. The Helpdesk staff pulled a PC from the IT business continuity stockpile and prepared it for her use.
11/9/2018 14:40
Lawrence Albright with the Sheriff’s Office called the Helpdesk and asked Brian Loflin to document the events around the SUPC3977 drive. Lawrence Albright stated that were doing an internal investigation and had asked Bernie Maness to assist. He also stated that they had cleared the request for assistance with Bernie’s current supervisor.
11/9/2018 16:20
I received a call from Greg Seabolt. He wanted to know what the current state of the SUPC3977 drive was. I told him that it was unreadable. He asked me to secure the drive until he could have it examined further by someone with more advanced forensic tools. The drive has now been secured in IT.