WASHINGTON — A Laurel man who worked as an information technology contractor for the U.S. Department of Justice was sentenced Tuesday to prison after federal prosecutors said he stole more than 4,800 government cell phones and sold them to phone reselling businesses.
Javan King, 42, of Laurel, was sentenced May 26, 2026, in U.S. District Court to 12 months and one day in prison after pleading guilty to one count of mail fraud.
King pleaded guilty Feb. 10 before U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb, who also ordered him to serve two years of supervised release and pay $1,319,172.85 in restitution. Federal prosecutors had requested a 24-month prison sentence.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, King worked between 2021 and 2025 as an IT contractor for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. During that time, prosecutors said he caused the department to order thousands of mobile devices it did not need.
After the phones were shipped to King at DOJ, he sent them to phone reselling businesses, according to prosecutors. Those businesses paid him more than $1.3 million for the devices.
Federal prosecutors said King used the proceeds for gambling at MGM casinos and on FanDuel, vacations, private school tuition and a down payment on a $92,000 Range Rover SUV.
“King’s theft of thousands of government phones was a brazen betrayal of the public trust that drained taxpayers of more than a million dollars,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said in a statement. “He then squandered the stolen money on gambling, luxury vacations, and a high-end vehicle.”
The scheme came to light in August 2025 after a private citizen in Kentucky contacted the Justice Department and reported that an iPhone she purchased online belonged to the department, prosecutors said.
King acknowledged that the scheme caused DOJ to suffer an actual loss of more than $1.3 million because of fees paid to AT&T for unnecessary phone lines and devices.
The case was investigated by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kondi Kleinman.
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