PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — A paid poll worker accused of stealing an encrypted access key from the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office is facing a felony charge.
John Panicci, 59, was taken into custody on Saturday and made his first appearance in court on Sunday. He is being charged with a felony count of offenses against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks, and electronic devices, as well as a misdemeanor charge of petit theft.
WATCH: Supervisor of elections says key only contained training data
According to the affidavit, an investigation was initiated by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office on March 27, after they received a call about a theft at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office.
The office's security manager, Christopher Allen, claimed that after a March 19 training session for the March 24 special election, a device related to their voter registration kiosk was missing, and he was notified of it on March 23. Surveillance footage showed Panicci taking the device, described as a black and silver SanDisk brand USB drive, from a neighboring kiosk and putting in his right pocket.
Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link told WPTV that Panicci had been screened to be a poll worker in three past elections, and a clean record permitted him to come back. Link said the stolen drive only included training material and not sensitive voter information.
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"In this case, it's just training data. So it is fake names, fake addresses, fake numbers, just for purposes of giving different scenarios to poll workers," Link said.
He was terminated the same day as the training, and was not allowed to participate in the March 24 election.
The incident happened on March 19. Link said trainers noticed the USB stick was missing while preparing for the next class.
"At the end of each training class, the trainers prepare for the next class. After his class, while they were preparing for the next class, they noticed that there was one of the sticks missing," Link said.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office said the theft was not reported until eight days later, on March 27. When I asked the supervisor of elections why she waited more than a week to report the theft, Link said there was no immediate threat to election security.
"It's an inexpensive thumb drive, and it had only training data on it, so there wasn't an immediate threat to election security... if somebody did try to unencrypt something or try to learn something from that, we thought it was important to alert PBSO," Link said.
The arrest report explains there were concerns that if the device was to be reverse-engineered or tampered with, it could be utilized with malicious intent.
WPTV spoke to cybersecurity expert Alan Crowetz, who said even with the encrypted key, there are still layered defenses to protect against people stealing sensitive information.
"A voting machine isn't like your home computer, you know, it runs a different operating system, a different setup. You have to be very, very knowledgeable to get certain kinds of keys," Crowetz said.
Link insists the special election was not impacted.
"Election results are on a standalone server. They are not on the internet... So people who were concerned that this somehow affected the March 24 election, it did not in any way," Link said.
The affidavit states the SOE office was able to complete the March 24 election "without having to change any security protocols."
Panicci remains in Palm Beach County Jail on a $6,000 bond. He is due in court again on April 24.
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