June 2, 2011, - 5:43 pm
Immigration and Customs EnFARCEment: ICE Clueless as Agent Openly Steals & Sells Agency Loot on Ebay
The story of Senior Supervisory Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent Steve Kucan is a microcosm of a larger picture. The top brass at the agency are clueless. They want to take their agency away from doing the desperately needed immigration and customs work they are supposed to do and transform it into the largest domestic law enforcement agency with no boundaries or mission, far beyond the reasons the agency was created after 9/11 in the first place. And, yet, they cannot even see the forest for the trees. They don’t even notice when one of their own agents is constantly, openly hauling away government property and selling it on Ebay. How the heck are they gonna effectively investigate crime and track down illegal aliens, if they don’t even notice this going on for years inside their own agency?
Agents who know Kucan claim they saw him openly taking things home even back in the days when he worked for the old INS. Agents constantly complained about this, but no one cared . . . until now, years after the fact. It’d be kind of funny if it weren’t so sad. And it’s why some of the many demoralized ICE agents refer to their own agency as Immigration and Customs EnFARCEment.
An immigration agent living in Wood-Ridge [DS: Northern New Jersey] has been arrested after being accused of stealing government property and selling it on the Internet.
A supervisory special agent with the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Steven Kucan, 47, of Wood Ridge, was arrested on May 17 for allegedly stealing government property and selling it on eBay.
He was arrested by agents of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General and ICE, Office of Professional Responsibility on a Complaint charging him with one count of theft of government property.
According to the United States Attorney’s Office, Kucan supervised an administrative group at ICE’s offices in New York since the 1990s, and was responsible for obtaining, storing and controlling ICE equipment. According to the complaint, Kucan regularly stole ICE property between December 2004 and February 2011. He is accused of maintaining an eBay account in the name of a relative through which he sold approximately $37,000 worth of ICE property – including printer cartridges, film, batteries, camera lenses, combat lights for ICE’s M-4 rifles and an immersion suit designed to prevent hypothermia in cold water.
ICE employees reported they saw Kucan wheel ICE property out of the offices on carts, including one who saw him visit the offices to remove property on a Saturday.
Agents also found numerous items of ICE property stored at Kucan’s residence, including personal computers, printers, keyboards, police batons, flashlights, work gloves, safety glasses, lifejackets, helmets, handcuffs, gun holsters, camera lenses, emergency lights and sirens and two-way radio systems – items with a total value of approximately $40,000.
Again, ICE agents say that this shows their management is clueless, as they should have been on to this years ago.
Tags: Agent Steve Kucan, Customs, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, eBay, government property, ICE, ICE agent, ICE Property, Immigration, Immigration and Customs EnFARCEment, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Indicted, indictment, New Jersey, Steve Kucan, theft, Wood-Ridge
Its funny… they can’t keep track of their own property and we’re expected to believe they can track down and deport illegal aliens and aliens who have overstayed their visa terms.
Yeah, sure.
NormanF on June 2, 2011 at 6:24 pm