Princeton Professor Charged with Stealing 21 Lawn Signs
Princeton professor John Mulvey is facing theft charges for allegedly stealing 21 signs for a computer repair business from private lawns in the town. Ted Horodynsky — the owner of the Princeton Computer Repairs, Tutoring and Digital Services — had set up a surveillance camera on a lawn. Horodynsky says he turned the video over to police.
Horodynsky says the signs started to disappear after he had a traffic indicent with Mulvey. He set up a camera that caught part of Mulvey’s license plate during one of the five thefts captured on video, which led police to find 21 of Horodynsky’s signs in Mulvey’s garage.
Mulvey says it’s all a misunderstanding, and that he didn’t take any signs.
“Some people don’t like the signs and they throw them in the woods,” Mulvey said. “I make it my job to pick them up and keep them, so that’s what happened.”
Mulvey said he never took any of the signs out of the ground. “I have no reason to do that,” he said. “I have nothing against signs or capitalism.”
“I have nothing against signs or capitalism” sounds like something a robot would say. The value of the recovered signs was $471, or a little over $22 bucks a sign.
John Mulvey “is a leading expert in large-scale optimization models and algorithms, especially financial applications.”