Florida man accused of stealing election computer equipment in Palm Beach, authorities say

A man accused of stealing election computer equipment in Palm Beach County was arrested on Saturday, authorities said.

John Panicci was charged with taking damaged computer equipment, supplies/electronic devices.

According to detectives, on Friday, they arrived at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office after receiving reports that sensitive computer equipment had been stolen.

During their investigation, detectives said that on March 19, the Elections Office was doing a training session for volunteers who were going to help with the election scheduled on March 24.

Detectives said that during the training session, Panicci stole an encrypted access key from a voter registration terminal.

The key that Panacci allegedly took was programmed only for the training databases, but there were concerns that if someone else could reverse engineer the encryption, they could then use it on a voter registration kiosk for malicious purposes.

After Panacci was identified as a suspect, an arrest and search warrant were issued, and he was taken into custody at his home.

Detectives were able to find the stolen items, as well as a large number of electronic and digital storage devices.

Panacci was taken to the Palm Beach County Jail and is expected to appear before a judge on Sunday morning.