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Email This Article A stolen laptop with personal data for more than 98,000 current and forme r UC Berkeley students has been recovered with no evidence of identity t heft, and a college student has been charged with buying the computer fr om the thief -- and selling it for profit on Ebay, university officials said Thursday. Shuki Alburati, 18, a City College of San Francisco freshman, is accused of buying a computer from a woman who stole it from a UC Berkeley office in March. Alburati then sold the laptop over the Internet to an unsuspe cting South Carolina man. An analysis of the computer at a Silicon Valley forensic lab revealed tha t it had been reformatted, making it hard to determine whether anyone ha d accessed the names and Social Security numbers of 98,369 graduate stud ents, graduate school applicants and other individuals, including those who received doctoral degrees as far back as 1976. But university spokeswoman Janet Gilmore said Thursday, "There's nothing in the Police Department investigation that points to any type of identi ty theft or credit card theft." Alburati, who specializes in selling laptops and cell phones online, told The Chronicle on Thursday that he didn't know the new IBM X40 worth $2, 429 had been stolen from an unlocked office at UC Berkeley. He blamed hi s plight on a woman who sold him the computer in April for only $300 or $340 during a transaction outside his apartment on Leavenworth Street in San Francisco. "It's unfair," said Alburati, a business student who has pleaded not guil ty to a misdemeanor charge of receiving stolen property. She should stop what she's doing because she'll get caugh t eventually." The woman hasn't been identified, and Alburati said he didn't know her na me. But he described her as African American, about 5 feet 2 inches tall and 200 pounds, with short, straight hair, which fits the description o f a woman in her 40s who was spotted leaving a Graduate Division employe e's fourth-floor office in Sproul Hall shortly before 1 pm March 11, u niversity officials said. On April 14, Alburati said he received a phone call from a man who saw hi s ad on Craigslist, the popular online bulletin board where people post job listings, sell things and look for dates. The man said his mother had a laptop she wanted to sell. A couple of days later, the woman double-parked on his street and sold him the computer after saying it wasn't stolen. "The whole transaction only took about one minute," Alburati said in a st atement to police. "She seemed suspicious, because she sold me an expens ive laptop for such a low price. Alburati said he didn't remember if he had reformatted the laptop, althou gh he would usually do so if a computer contained personal files. On April 19, Alburati placed the laptop for sale on Ebay, the online auct ion site, where his posting read, "I sell almost all laptops that exist. The South Carolina man installed a new operating system on the computer. UC Berkeley police tracked down the computer on June 1 and retrieved it w ith the help of police in South Carolina. Police arrested Alburati on Ju ne 8 on suspicion of two felony counts of receiving stolen property, and he was jailed in lieu of $20,000 bail. The next day, however, prosecuto rs lodged a single misdemeanor count against him.
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