A Northampton County man has been charged with stealing more than $336,000 in camera equipment from his employer.

Richard Sasserath, 36, of 1336 Blue Mountain Drive, Danielsville, was arraigned by Magisterial Judge Daniel Trexler Monday afternoon.Sasserath was charged with theft by deception, and receiving stolen property from Olympus, located at 3500 Corporate Parkway, Upper Saucon Township.An investigation into the theft began on Dec. 10, 2014, when members of the Olympus internal audit team contacted Sgt. Thomas Nicoletti of the Upper Saucon Township Police Department.The audit team reported that it had discovered an ongoing theft of Olympus camera equipment by Sasserath, who was a member of the marketing team.Lehigh County District Attomey James B. Martin said the 17-month investigation by Nicoletti involved conducting interviews and obtaining court orders from an Internet service provider, such as eBay and PayPal.According to an affidavit of probable cause filed by Nicoletti:The leader of the audit team said that as part of Sasserath's job function, Sasserath was given numerous pieces of Olympus camera equipment to distribute to individuals in the photography field, referred to as "visionaries," at no cost.Sasserath made requests for equipment usually were made via interdepartmental email requests.The audit team learned that Sasserath had altered email approvals to acquire additional camera equipment that was not used for legitimate business.A check of registered serial numbers logged with the warranty department against a list of stolen camera equipment showed the names of some people who had the stolen camera equipment.Some of those people reported buying the equipment on eBay from a seller named l080Photography.Nicoletti obtained a court order for eBay records and determined that the user name associated with the seller, 1080Photography, was a Matthew Kline.Nicoletti talked to Kline, who provided numerous records of direct purchases he made of Olympus equipment with a seller named "Chrissy" who used the email address of cag65

l4@ptd.net.Kline also provided all records that he had of the equipment purchased from "Chrissy" through PayPal.com. Police tracked the account to Christine A. Sasserath, Richard Sasserath's wife.Christine Sasserath said that her husband had used her email, eBay, and PayPal accounts, and that he was selling Olympus camera equipment on eBay.Nicoletti interviewed Richard Sasserath, who admitted changing authorized emails from his supervisors so he could obtain unauthorized equipment.Sasserath said he also sold Olympus equipment owned by his father and received about $30,000.The total amount of equipment sold by Sasserath in that manner was about $192,476.The total amount of money Sasserath received from the sale of equipment, according to the records provided, is about $336,075.