Democrat National Convention Organizers Claim $500,000 Worth of Electronics Lost or Stolen Months After Charlotte Convention

Months after the Democrat National Convention in Charlotte, NC wrapped up, Convention organizers have filed a police report for lost and stolen electronics worth $465,197. The pricetag for some of the missing has raised some eyebrows and led to speculation that the monetary value of the missing electronics has been vastly overstated in an attempt to collect more than the original price of the items from the insurance company.

'How inflated could it be?' you might be asking yourself. Try $75,537 for a MacBook Pro, $54,250 for a missing Blackberry or $30,503 for a lost iPhone, according to a report filed with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in May.

Other items reported to have gone missing at the convention included two iPads worth around $15,000 each, laptops listed at $40,000, $34,000 and $25,000 each, and other miscellaneous items worth far more than their list price.

The report claimed that 40 items were reported lost and one item – the most highly valued one, the $75,000 MacBook Pro – was stolen.

The apparently inflated prices were reported in May with the Charlotte Police Department by Kenneth Hardy, deputy in-house counsel for the Democratic National Convention Committee, on behalf of the DNCC Host Committee.

While proprietary software and programs can increase the value of a laptop, Blackberry, smartphone or tablet, companies like Apple [NASDAQ- AAPL] list items like the missing 13 inch MacBook Pro starting at $1199, the police report file by the DNCC Host Committee values the same computer at $75,537- more than a year's wage for most Americans.

The police report filing comes after Duke Energy [NYSE- DUK] announced that they had completely written off a $10 million line of credit and loans for the Charlotte DNC host committee in February.

The Charlotte host committee had repaid just $1 million as of the end of the year and still owed $9 million in loans and another $1 million in outstanding bills, according to the latest filing with the Federal Election Commission.

The financial backing from Duke comes despite vows by Democratic Party officials to put on the convention without corporate cash.

Organizers broke that pledge after they were unable to hit their $36.7-million fundraising goal, drawing $5 million from a separate civic committee financed by companies such as Bank of America, Duke Energy and AT&T to rent the the Time Warner Arena for the event.

a Duke official said that at least $6 million of the money owed to the utility would be written off as a business expense.