The Smoking Gun reports:
In a bold and bizarre attempt to destroy evidence seized during a federal raid, a New York City man grabbed a flash drive and swallowed the data storage device while in the custody of Secret Service agents, records show. Florin Necula ingested the Kingston flash drive shortly after his January 21 arrest outside a bank in Queens, according to U.S. District Court filings. Necula and several codefendants had been transported to a Secret Service office in Brooklyn, where they were to be questioned and processed. While there, and in the view of investigators, Necula “grabbed Subject Flash Drive 2, which had been on his person at the time of his arrest, and swallowed,” Agent Joseph Borger noted in the below February 25 search warrant affidavit. When Necula was unable to pass the item after about four days, doctors–concerned that the drive was not compatible with the suspect’s GI tract–concluded he “would be injured if they allowed the flash drive to remain inside of him,” reported Borger. Necula eventually agreed to allow doctors at New York Downtown Hospital to remove the item, according to a source familiar with the incident. A Kingston executive said it was unclear if stomach acid could damage a flash drive. “As you might imagine, we have no actual experience with someone swallowing a USB,” Mike Sager wrote in an e-mail to TSG.
Read more on TSG and see the affidavit.