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Been Robbed Recently? Check Ebay
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jan 08, 2007 09:02 PM
from the pawn-shop-of-the-new-century dept.
from the pawn-shop-of-the-new-century dept.
fistfullast33l writes "A man from Great Neck, Long Island has been arrested on charges of stealing electronic equipment and selling it on Ebay. The police were tipped off when one of his alleged victims was searching for a replacement GPS device and found a perfect match on eBay — almost too perfect. A quick check of the serial number (note to cyber-criminals: don't post those) showed that it was the exact device that had been stolen." From the article: "Police and prosecutors were hesitant to provide details of how they determined all the devices had been stolen, but at least two of the laptops were stamped 'Property of St. John's University.' Detective Ray Cote noted that the GPS devices specifically had the addresses of the legitimate owners programmed in and police were now contacting those victims to eventually return the items."
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Eventually? (Score:5, Funny)
Just a minute, sir. I'm almost done downloading this pr0n.
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well (Score:5, Funny)
A++++ WOULD DEFINITELY STEAL FROM AGAIN
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What happens to the buyers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What happens to the buyers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Very good question. My guess is that they will be tracked down and required to return the items, but will be compensated at the expense of the thief.
They will certainly not get into trouble for the purchase of stolen goods, and if they do, any reasonable judge would automatically acquit them.
Parent
Re:What happens to the buyers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Very good question. My guess is that they will be tracked down and required to return the items, but will be compensated at the expense of the thief.
I seriously doubt the police are going to bother with this, or even have the resources to do so. Most of these buyers aren't going to be from NYC, so there's a jurisdiction problem. Also who's to say EVERYTHING he sold is stolen? It probbably is, but that's not proof.
The best that could be accomplished is to contact each buyer and tell them the seller sold stolen items on ebay, and the item they bought might be stolen. Then ask them to look for information on the items that might identify the owner.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They will certainly not get into trouble for the purchase of stolen goods, and if they do, any reasonable judge would automatically acquit them.
Unless eBay was being used to launder them...
You wouldn't want to do that. (Score:5, Funny)
It's not worth as much after it's been washed.
Parent
Re:What happens to the buyers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
mmmm... not sure about that... (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, there have been a couple cases of people being conned into "buying" public property (most famously the Brooklyn Bridge.) Yes, these people were EXTREMELY gullible, so it probably wouldn't pass your "reasonable expectation" test, but let's take a step back for a moment and imagine a scenario where the person was not extraordinarily gullible, but rather was duped through nigh-superhuman effort on the part of the con artist. Let's say that the fraudster knew that the target would have a keen interested in buying the Brooklyn Bridge, if it was ever actually for sale, so he cooked up a scheme involving buying off the subject's friends and acquaintances, slipping him fake newspapers, hiring actors to play all the appropriate officials, figured out a halfway plausible reason for the sale (they're building a replacement, perhaps) etc. and in the end, he actually succeeds in convincing his target that the Brooklyn Bridge was, indeed, for sale, and the target "buys" it from the criminal. Does that now mean that the target legally owns the Brooklyn Bridge? Of course, the only sane answer is a resounding "NO!" The government did not agree to sell him anything.
I believe that the "reasonable expectation" concept you speak of pertains more to criminal culpability--the buyer be held criminally responsible, for example, if he buys the Mona Lisa (a few months after it was stolen) because it's not reasonable for him to claim that he didn't know it was stolen.
I'm not 100% sure on this, but it just makes sense--if ownership of the stolen property was actually legally transfered to the buyer, it would be utter chaos. You could steal the hope diamond, trade it to your friend for a candy bar (technically, this is a valid transaction) telling him it's worthless glass, and as long as you could prove that your friend really did think it was fake, it would become his legal property and the original owners would be SOL. Somehow, I really doubt that it works that way...
Parent
Re:mmmm... not sure about that... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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Re:What happens to the buyers? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Re:What happens to the buyers? (Score:5, Funny)
Husband: Will you be glad to be home after visiting the in-laws honey?
Wife: Yeah.
Husband: Well here we... hmmm... the house isn't there.
Wife: *sigh* Have you checked your pockets?
Husband: Now why would it be in my pockets? Someone must have stolen it.
Wife: Check your pockets. You're always leaving stuff there.
Parent
Re:What happens to the buyers? (Score:5, Interesting)
The car is the returned to it's orginal owner or sold by the insurance comany and the buyer gets nothing. This is why it's a good idea to check whether a car is stolen before you buy it because not even your insurance will cover you for this. I would guess its the same with any stolen goods in the UK.
Parent
Dilemma (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd rather find out who your new roommate is and toss him a few bucks to give you the jailhouse welcome.
There's a third path. (Score:5, Informative)
A friend of mine got his cellphone and wallet stolen when his car was burglarized, and by monitoring the numbers that the thief called from it, and then calling up the various numbers and pretending to be different people (which is an amusing social engineering story in itself), got the name and home phone number of the criminal. The police, who weren't very much help otherwise, went out and picked the guy up (he was apparently well known to them). My friend got his phone back, plus restitution for the money in his wallet. If he had just waited for the police to do something, he would have been out a phone and a substantial amount of cash.
Sometimes you just need to do some detective work yourself.
Parent
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irony (Score:4, Funny)
Note to crooks... (Score:4, Funny)
note to cyber-criminals: don't post those (Score:3, Insightful)
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In general you don't need to know the whole serial, only part of it, but I don
Re:Cellular Phones (Score:4, Interesting)
We were carrying Sprint cell phones right when they started rolling out their CDMA service. We had a live demo phone to show off the clarity. My (now wife) GF was helping these two retards from the next door Hometown Buffet (who had stolen the phone from the demo kiosk). They were asking about car chargers and she said: "I'll be happy to help you once you give me my phone back". Well, they bolted (nevermind the Hometown Buffet polo shirts or the name tags), and my GF called the sprint store. These fools went to make a call, where upon a security officer from sprint (pretexting as a customer service rep) said: "Oh, the store must have accidently sold you a demo unit. Bring it into the Sprint store on Fulton for a free replacement and activation." Like all crooks who've been caught, these guys were morons and went into the store. While the replacement phone was "activating" the cops were on the way
Nevermind that my GF was also in the Buffet chewing out the manager about these two. She successfully recovered the value of the demo kiosk (which they damaged when they stole the phone) from their final paychecks, leaving them with (IIRC) under a buck each for the "you're fired" pay check.
-nB
Parent
Note to Slashdot editors: (Score:4, Funny)
Shill bidding (Score:4, Funny)
Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ahhh (Score:5, Funny)
I'm shocked! (Score:4, Funny)
Here is another one from last weekend (Score:3, Interesting)
The Seattle Police were not as curious (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Seattle Police were not as curious (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:The Seattle Police were not as curious (Score:4, Informative)
If somebody steals a $250 stereo the police should spend $40k tracking the guy down. Then fine and/or imprison the criminal for the full cost of the investigation - if they're underage put a lean on the parent's house. A town with a theft problem probably has only 10 thieves in it, and if you got rid of them the quality of life would probably skyrocket. A few thieves go a long way, and inspire the next generation to do the same.
And today's thief is tomorrow's mugger or murderer. Throw the book at them before somebody gets killed or hurt.
This whole philosophy is what made Guiliani popular in NYC - he cleaned the place up by spending money on petty crimes, and got rid of many of the big expensive crimes in the process.
Now, the war on drugs is a different story...
Parent
Re:The Seattle Police were not as curious (Score:4, Informative)
I'm all for vigilante justice, but unfortunately, I believe the reality is that in a situation like this, a jury is much more likely to convict because this guy scared or hurt the "poor" burglar. Juries in this country are always filled with losers and morons who side with criminals.
Here in Arizona, one of the most gun-friendly (and weapon-friendly: we can carry switchblades legally) states, we had an incident recently where a retired schoolteacher was hiking in the forest and was attacked by some dogs. He took out his 10mm and fired into the ground, scaring them off, but then the crazy owner ran for him to attack him (apparently ignoring the fact that the guy was armed), so the guy shot him rather than be hurt or killed by the larger and much younger man. During the trial, it came out that the dog-owner was mentally unstable, lived in his car in the woods, had a huge anger management problem, etc., but all that testimony was disallowed. The older man (60+) was convicted and sentenced to 10 years. One interesting point made by the prosecutor was that the guy was using hollow-point "killer" rounds in his 10mm, and also that his gun was a 10mm which is quite powerful. This apparently had the effect of turning many of the stupid jurors' opinions against him. But any moron knows that if you're going to defend yourself, you want hollow-point bullets (after all, that's what police use), and 10mm guns are sometimes used by police as well. Not to mention, the guy was carrying this gun to protect himself from mountain lions and bears which are common in that area, not from crazy dog owners, and with bears and the like, bigger is better. Anyway, my point after all this rambling is that even here in a very pro-gun "red" state, and in one of the smaller towns (not more liberal Tucson or Phoenix), the jury was full of the same "poor criminal" mentality jurors that you'd expect in Massachusetts.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
BOO!
good to know that.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because
Somebody help! (Score:4, Funny)
This Actually Happened to Us (Score:5, Interesting)
Mom's phone wires were cut her call bell was de-commissioned, and she was savagely beaten--actually unimaginably beaten, and left for dead on the floor in her living room. One of the items taken was an antique doll, quite distinctive and large, and also very valuable. It dated back to approximately the 1820's and had been handed down through the generations from mother to daughter for all that time.
Aged Mum survived, though with traumatic brain injuries that left her mental capacities greatly diminished. She grieved over that doll; perhaps it was irrational, but I grieved, too. While the police worked on finding the perpetrator, I began to haunt eBay. Each morning as I started work, and each night before I went to bed, I ran search after search, using every term I could think of. Three weeks after the crime, I hit paydirt; the doll was there. Because I had been so connected to it over my lifetime, I was able to supply an exhaustive description. (Unaccountably we had no photograph.) The police contacted eBay, the auction was stopped, they got a warrant, and next morning they served it on the seller.
As it turns out, he was legitimate; he had purchased the doll at a well known local flea market the week before. He had been on eBay for several years, selling vintage stuff and assorted items he found at local sales. He provided as much information as he could, and the doll was returned to us within 24 hours of my first locating it at eBay. The doll's porcelain head was undamaged, but her arms (which are kidskin leather) were in bad shape.
Stories like this really don't have good outcomes. In our case we've had to see an intelligent, lively old lady suffer the loss of her intellect in what should be a comfortable old age. The police have not located the criminal after two years, and additional violence has taken place at that facility where my mother lived. Aged Mum is in a much better facility now, and the doll is here with me--and has been photographed and appraised for insurance purposes.
I guess the lessons learned are these: (1) Ebay does cooperate with police, and the police know how to secure their cooperation--probably best to leave the interaction to the cops. (2) I had some kind of underlying certainty, which might have been irrational, that the doll would eventually show up on eBay, one way or the other. I searched diligently and regularly. (3) Document your valuables. (4) It may take a while for your items to turn up, and they may pass through several hands. It all depends on whether the scum who has robbed you is versed in eBay or has to use the traditional fences, flea markets, and crooked pawnbrokers.
Serial #s (Score:5, Insightful)
Stolen PC (Score:3, Funny)
Grumble, grumble...
you kids have it hard. When I was your age... (Score:3, Funny)
ah the good old days, when I used to live next door to a 10 acre Fencing operation..er...Flea Market.
yep, twice happened to me (Score:3, Informative)
In both cases we contacted police. In one case, apparently little was done by police, despite serial number check immediately revealing that the machine had been recently stolen from a school. In the 2nd case, the stolen laptop - full of personal data, mostly irreplaceable - was the only lead in solving a major house burglary. Laptop returned to owner, thief arrested, eventually had to pay restitution to ebay purchaser. In the second case, the ebay seller's transaction history looked very suspicious. If you have any suspicions - random tips: comb feedback logs in detail; if machine has personal data, contact previous owner (in our case, they confirmed the robbery and were very grateful); Try to get as much identifying detail from seller as possible in case it must be given to police; Don't meet them in person; Get serial numbers and check with police before concluding the sale; contact police and ask for advice.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =320060047493 [ebay.com]
Love this one
Q: Does this come with the operating manual?
A: NO MANUAL AND ORIGINAL RETAIL BOX IS MISSING
from http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =320064863803 [ebay.com]
You don't know most thieves (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Want to be robbed soon? (Score:5, Informative)
I can think of a few possibilities:
1) Seller cares about his time, and doesn't feel like trying to match schedules with random strangers who may or may not be timely.
2) Seller cares about his safety and privacy, and doesn't want some stranger scoping out his place to rob it.
3) Seller wants to charge $30 for shipping when item costs $20 to ship, netting an extra $10.
4) Seller is afraid that buyer might be a paranoid slashtastic moron, who thinks that every single fucking thing in life is a trap.
I'm not a crook, but there isn't a chance in hell I would agree to in-person pickups.
Parent
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