And how much did this investigation cost, when you account for all the hours spent by investigators, lawers, judges, etc?

My guess is it was a huge net loss for the taxpayer.

The more effective move for the nation would have been for this guys boss to have confronted him and said "computer parts keep going missing on your shift. You have 2 weeks to make sure all the computers are back to their exact original config or we're gonna investigate and you could end up in prison".