Christopher Naples, 42, of Mattituck, turned himself in to authorities Wednesday morning and was charged with third-degree grand larceny, public corruption, computer trespassing and official misconduct. Naples pleaded not guilty and was released without bail at his arraignment.
~Snipped~
Sini said Naples admitted to owning and installing the devices when confronted by investigators.
Am I the only one who thinks the parts I've bolded, contradict each other?
Not a fan of US laws, the whole procedures, and differences in the same country but this can happen here in Europe too.
You can be under investigation as a suspect in theft when a company accuses you of doing so and you can present yourself to the police, admit the action but plead not guilty on charges depending on what they are. For example, you can claim that the company was paying a fixed price per month for energy, not a metered one so your consumption would have not affected the budget nor that it put anyone in danger.
This is the case with the charge of larceny, he can contest that he did not steal anything, he used a resource that was already paid for, and the party didn't face losses or damages, he can dismiss the charge of public corruption as he did nothing against the community nor he accepted any bribe, also deny the computer trespassing as we don't know what his setup was, he might have used a private way to connect to the internet as for the official misconduct, this is a bit tricky, it's way too vague but I don't think he has chances of getting away with it.
To give an example, this happened to my cousin about ten or so years ago, he had to pick a damaged truck late in the night, arrived at his office at around 3 am to thought of getting his laptop it as it was Friday and he had no personal computer no nothing and had a weekend to waste. Unfortunately for him, the Monday shift saw some supplies missing and the boss accused him of stealing. He did go to the police on his own, he admitted being Friday night without previous consent inside the building and not just in the parking, but denied he took anything else and lucky for him he was filmed coming out of the building with just the laptop in his hand and no other luggage the security cameras from the next-door building. The charges were dropped but it was an ugly incident.