Ex-DOJ contractor sentenced to 12 months in $1.3 million government phone fraud scheme

A former Justice Department employee received a sentence of more than 12 months in prison for stealing thousands of government cell phones and selling them to cover personal expenses in a $1.3 million scheme.

While working as an IT contractor for the department’s Civil Rights Division from 2021 to 2025, 42-year-old Javan King, of Laurel, Maryland, stole 4,800 government cell phones by requesting the DOJ order mobile devices it did not need, the DOJ said in a statement on Tuesday.

King later sold the phones to reselling businesses and spent the profits on gambling, sports betting, vacations, private school tuition, and a down payment for 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,” said U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro, who announced the sentence. “He will now be required to repay the very funds he siphoned from the American taxpayer and serve a prison sentence for his crimes."

King pleaded guilty on Feb. 10, 2026, to one count of mail fraud before Judge Jia M. Cobb. While federal prosecutors requested a 24-month prison sentence, Judge Cobb ordered King to serve two years of supervised release and to repay the funds to the government, in addition to the 12-month-and-one-day term.

The scheme had also resulted in the DOJ losing money not only due to the phones themselves, but unnecessary wireless service fees that it paid for unused phone lines, King acknowledged.

The investigation began when a Kentucky citizen alerted the DOJ in August 2025 that an iPhone she bought online appeared to belong to the department, according to federal prosecutors.