A man who works as the head of security at a company has been arrested for allegedly stealing 123 laptops from his employer, Shanghai police said on Thursday.

The stolen laptops were worth over 400,000 yuan (US$58,000) in total, and up till now just 50 have been recovered, police said.

The theft took place over a weekend at the end of May, and the company, which is located in Xuhui District, filed a report with district police the next Monday.

About 30 laptops were taken from the office and another 90 from the company’s inventory.

Surveillance cameras at the company showed the suspect, a man surnamed Wang, using a trolley to transport the laptops to a minivan parked outside the building. He went up and down the elevator over 10 times early on Sunday morning.

The suspect is caught on the company's surveillance cameras transporting laptops out of the building.

Wang was caught 11 hours later and allegedly confessed to stealing the laptops to sell and cover his debt.

Wang said he took advantage of his position which enabled him to enter all locked spaces within the building to look for computers and then contacted a second-hand computer buyer online, claiming that his company had some laptops to dump, police said.

Wang sold Mac laptops at 4,300 yuan each and Lenovo branded laptops at 2,000 each, according to police.