A criminal investigation is underway into the unauthorized delivery to university facilities of more than $13,000 worth of chemicals and supplies that can be combined to manufacture illegal drugs.
According to a detailed e-mail obtained by The Daily that was sent early Saturday morning to Northwestern faculty and staff informing them of the investigation, multiple orders of drug-making materials were placed with the university’s primary chemical and laboratory suppliers during the past year.
The materials then were delivered to multiple sites on both the Chicago and Evanston campuses, said Randall Henry, the contracts administrator for purchasing in NU’s University Services department, who wrote the e-mail.
Henry told The Daily in a telephone interview Saturday that the illegal orders never were paid for by NU or any other party.
“Deliveries were made, but no money went out,” said Henry, who confirmed the details of the investigation described in the e-mail.
According to the e-mail, the investigation involves the Chicago Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, as well as the University Police.
“The university has cooperated fully with police investigative agencies, including the DEA, the FBI, Chicago Police Department, as well as its own University Police,” the e-mail stated. “While the perpetrators have not been identified or apprehended, we believe we have learned enough about the methods of how these orders were placed in order to alert the community to these thefts.”
The questionable orders – many of which were overnight deliveries – were placed by phone without proper validation, according to the e-mail. Other labs may also have unknowingly signed for the delivered materials.
“Overnight deliveries become a problem because those deliveries don’t go through central receiving facilities,” Henry told The Daily. “Whoever the carrier might be just walks through our front doors and delivers the items to labs. … Labs are open at incredibly late times.”
Charles Loebbaka, NU’s director of media relations, confirmed there is an “ongoing criminal investigation” by Chicago Police but would not offer further details. Officials from UP, Chicago Police and the FBI declined to provide additional information about the case, citing department policies that prevent them from releasing information about ongoing investigations.
Administrators and law enforcement officials declined to comment on possible suspects, the types of chemicals ordered or the companies that supplied the materials.
Henry said he wrote the e-mail one month ago but released it Saturday in an effort to solicit information that might help the investigation.
The decentralized process for ordering research materials and the high volume of requests by NU researchers often make tracking such purchases a challenge, Henry added. He declined to identify specific vendors involved in the investigation, adding that NU buys materials from at least a dozen different suppliers.
But most lab materials the university orders come to a receiving dock for record keeping, according to Robert MacDonald, a professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology at NU, who said he is unfamiliar with the investigation.
MacDonald said shipments might slip by if an order was sent to an individual rather than to the university. In that case, no record of the transaction would ever take place, he said.
“If you called them up, had it sent to yourself, then the receiving people would never see it,” MacDonald said.
Saturday’s mass e-mail outlined several “purchasing standards” that should be used when placing departmental orders, especially for chemical and laboratory supplies. The guidelines urge university employees to limit the number of people with access to account information, always to require a recipient for an order and to use “hard copy” purchase orders.
“By installing multiple levels of checks and balances, departments can better protect their accounts and assets, while also limiting the university’s exposure to criminal activity and loss liability,” the e-mail said.
Anyone with information regarding suspicious activities that may relate to the ongoing investigation are asked in the e-mail to contact Sgt. Edward Cook of UP on the Chicago Campus at (312) 503-8314.
