He made a lot of money selling equipment. It was stolen from the University of Kentucky.

A Lexington man accused of selling more than $500,000 in computer equipment stolen from the University of Kentucky has pleaded guilty in federal court.

Toquoto Richardson, who worked as a data center operations engineer at UK, received more than $124,000 from 45 sales over a six-year period beginning in 2010, according to a plea agreement filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Lexington.

But an internal audit revealed Richardson had sold more than $500,000 in computer equipment for personal gain over 10 years, UK said Thursday. The audit determined that the equipment came from the Information Technology department, the university said.

Richardson, 43, was immediately fired in 2016 when he was caught attempting to sell a computer storage controller on eBay, the online auction site.

UK Healthcare officials contacted university police in March 2016 when a theft was discovered, UK said. The criminal case followed along with the subsequent audit.

Richardson pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. The plea agreement says Richardson took actively used, stolen equipment and was "holding it out to potential purchasers online as being surplus property." The purchasers were on the auction sites.

In emails with buyers, Richardson "falsely and materially represented to his purchasers that he had authority to sell this equipment," the court document says.

UK Healthcare IT has taken action to improve its inventory controls and limit access to equipment, the university said.

"When the rare occasion happens where someone acts inappropriately or unethically, we work to stop the activity, uncover why it happened and take remediation steps to ensure that it does not happen again," said Eric N. Monday, UK's executive vice president for finance and administration.

The audit determined that the coding of equipment as part of tracking and inventory control "was not rigorous enough," the university said. A number of steps to improve tracking of inventory and limiting access to equipment have been started.

"There is no system or set of processes that will prevent every bad actor," said Joe Reed, chief audit executive of the UK internal audit. "The question is when inappropriate behavior is discovered, do we, as an institution, act quickly and comprehensively to ensure that it doesn't happen again? That's what happens in an organization committed to doing things the right way. "

Federal prosecutors charged Richardson through a document called an information rather than going through a grand jury to get an indictment.

The use of an information and the fact that Richardson pleaded guilty on the same day it was filed indicates that he is cooperating with authorities in the investigation.

An employment history on Richardson's LinkedIn profile says his employment at UK began in April 2006 as a tech support specialist.

He became a systems programmer/network analyst at UK in October 2007, and then a data center operations engineer at the university in September 2014.

Before he was at UK, Richardson was a technical specialist for the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board, which oversees educator certification, according to the LinkedIn profile.

Richardson faces penalties of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Richardson acknowledged that as part of sentencing he will be required to pay restitution, but there is no agreement yet on the amount. That will ultimately be determined by U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell.

Richardson is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 9 in Lexington.

This story was originally published April 26, 2018 at 2:22 PM with the headline "He made a lot of money selling equipment. It was stolen from the University of Kentucky.."