> If I steal something and get caught, should I just be able to offer to pay and avoid prosecution? What we know is, that the owner claims there was a theft an

> If I steal something and get caught, should I just be able to offer to pay and avoid prosecution? What we know is, that the owner claims there was a theft and the (lets call him) contractor offered to reimburse the owner. This does not mean that there was a theft. If I should speculate, it is rather likely that the contractor did loose a laptop, and at this point the relationship was already poisonous enough that the owner either assumes that there was a theft or tries to exploit the missing laptop. > For the rest of it, the author doesn't have a leg to stand on. [...] I think this strongly depends (IANAL) and the contractor should get the benefit of doubt. So for example if his .ssh/ directory is on that partition, then he may or may not have ample reason to keep the contents ( e.g. a private key for one of his servers) secret.