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University police are continuing an investigation of facilities management, after an employee and a manager of a local tool shop were both arrested in an alleged scheme involving the theft of thousands of dollars worth of university tools.

Authorities said the arrests may be the result of a series of burglaries that could have begun over five years ago.

James Ott, the manager of the facilities management tool crib, was arrested May 11 on burglary charges and is suspected of illegally purchasing construction tools with university funds and reselling them for his own profit to other facilities workers.

University police detective Richard Elias said Ott was a low-level employee who took advantage of his position in the tool crib, which is a central depository for construction tools and equipment.

Elias said he could not say definitively how much money Ott had made because the investigation was still ongoing, but that it was at least in the thousands of dollars.

“As manager, he was in a position to acquire equipment needed by facilities and this was part of his job description. Through the course of time he took steps to conceal his actions and steal without being detected,” Elias said.

“He would manipulate purchase orders and conceive of other means to acquire tools purchased by the university under the guise of providing to other employees,” Elias said. “(He) would simply turn around and sell to people for their personal use.”

Robert Kann, an employee for the tool store Scotty’s and Sons, was arrested later in May for conspiracy to commit grand theft, and is suspected of helping facilitate Ott’s alleged crimes.

Kann is one of many people who sell tools to the university, and facilities management director Ron Calloway said the department has used Scotty’s and Sons, a store Kann works at, as a source for tool purchases for about five years.

Calloway said that the university processes hundreds of purchase orders each week and three people are required to sign a standard purchase order for it to be processed.

Barry Cole, senior superintendent of the hardware shop, said Ott sold many of the tools to low-level employees who were buying them for personal use and sometimes even thought they were doing the manager a favor.

“Everyone had the same story. The story was to give the money to Jim and he would buy (the tool) on a credit card and he would get travel miles on his credit card,” Cole said. “It was all done in the open.”

Authorities said they believe most of the workers who bought tools from Ott thought his transactions were legal. They said they are investigating whether Ott may have been manipulating purchase orders and stealing from the university since he was hired, almost a decade ago.

Both university police and the facilities management department have investigations into the theft.

But at least one worker believes another outside institution should be involved in the internal investigation process, saying that upper management who may have approved some of the purchase orders could have known about the crimes.

“When I see incompetence at the top and people hurting people I work alongside with, it really irritates me,” said a worker who has been with facilities management for over 10 years and wished to remain anonymous.

“Someone who is part of the problem should not be running the investigation. ... Their own investigation shouldn’t be internal, not by the guy who signed all these purchase orders,” the worker said. “This is just common sense.”

The worker said that everyone in facilities management who had bought a tool from Ott was being asked to bring the tools in for confiscation by police. He said that workers were not being reimbursed or paid for the equipment they purchased in transactions they thought were legal.

Some workers in facilities management were upset about the incident and hoped the department’s image wouldn’t be tarnished.

“Any time you have a problem in your department that you hear about ... it’s bothersome,” said Greg Zoll, senior superintendent of the facilities management roofing shop.

“I feel bad for the victims, I feel bad for (Jim Ott) even,” Zoll said. “It’s just a bad situation.”