UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate busted repeatedly sabotaging rival student’s computer, causing $46,000 in damages — hidden camera sting catches perp causing “sparks to fly out of the laptop,” student arrested on three felony counts

A PhD engineering student at UC Berkeley seemed to be extremely unfortunate, with computer after computer failing, racking up repair bills into the thousands of dollars. Their professor “smelled a rat,” reports The Mercury News, so they set up a laptop to record anything that might happen to the unlucky student’s hardware when it was left unattended. According to a cited police report, another PhD student was subsequently caught on video using an implement to vandalize their rival’s device, causing “sparks to fly out of the laptop,” to the tune of nearly $50,000 in damage.

Cumulative $46,855 in suspicious computer damage over recent years

The above drama unfolded at UC Berkeley’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department. At this hallowed seat of learning, an unnamed professor was more than suspicious of a cumulative $46,855 damage bill that had occurred to computers in the department over recent years. Moreover, “nearly all of it seemed to affect one particular Ph.D. candidate,” it was observed.

The professor’s savvy subterfuge