How Not to Steal a Sidekick 424
timmit was one of many readers to point out the story of a stolen Sidekick, writing with this excerpt from the site: ""When my friend realized that she had left the Sidekick in the taxi she asked me to immediately send a message to the phone saying that we would give a reward for the phone. There was no response. After a day of waiting, she had to go to the store and spend over $300 on a new Sidekick. When she put her SIM card in, she saw that the person(s) that had taken the phone had not only signed on to AOL leaving their name and password in the phone, but they had taken pictures of themselves." I can sympathize, after someone with the address Rmluckyguy@aol.com tried to sell me back the Visor Deluxe stolen from my car last year in Philadelphia. I hope Evan has better luck.
heh heh (Score:5, Insightful)
Your stupidity is certainly not news. (Score:3, Insightful)
Idiots (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Slashdotted already (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole thing is a giant internet pissing contest. Initially it was funny, and I hope the guy gets his sidekick back, but at the same time there's a whole lot of internet lawyering going on there that's pretty childish. The back and forth between the owner and the people that have the sidekick has gone on for about a day too long. It was funny to see the theives act like idiots, it was funny to see the owner thump them. But now it's down to a guy arguing with idiots and getting beaten by experience. The guy needs to realize that nothing he says is going make these folks magically wake up and say "OMFG, I was so wrong. Here's your phone back, sorry for the trouble. Peace be with you."
Shame, and Shaming the Shamer (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it looks to me like the young girl in the pictures may be somewhat innocent. Let's call them Mr. Army and Ms. Booty, just to make it easier (any similarity in naming between real life and the monikers is purely accidental... no really.) Mr. Army says, ostensibly, that a cabbie sold it to him. I doubt that's true. They also say that Mr. Army gave it to Ms. Booty as a present. That's probably what happened. And she got a SIM card and took some pictures and logged onto her AOL and now this guy takes her and shows her to the world as if she's a monster. The person who deserves the world's ire is the thief, Mr. Army.
He really needs to own up to the situation. If he bought it from a cabbie, he had to know it was stolen. And if he stole it himself, well... the best thing he can do now is take the phone back and apologize. Anything else is just prolonging the inevitable, and possibly getting him a larger sentence, should Mr. Shamer choose to press charges.
I feel like Ms. Booty is at least somewhat innocent. As it stands now, it would appear that she knows the phone is stolen, but obviously she's young, and judging by the fact that she has a child, probably none too bright, and easily swayed by Mr. Army's persuasion. This is a black mark on her life that will follow her around for many years to come. I'm sure she will have to endure some harsh judgement from her peers at school, and I'm not absolutely certain she deserves that.
And now that Mr. Shamer has rejected offers for free webhosting 'gone over his current provider's bandwidth cap' and put up a donation link, it amounts to little more than a cry for cash.
I feel sorry for everyone involved.
Re:one question on this (Score:5, Insightful)
If the person who finds it uses the service that they're not authorized to use, I would imagine that counts for something in the realm of stealing.
Say you find a wallet full of cash. I'm not sure of the legality of keeping it for yourself, and it's a jerky thing to do anyway , but it's definitely illegal to try to use the credit cards that you're not authorized to use. Using their phone service without permission is probably similar.
cyber vigilantism, digital photos, and humiliation (Score:2, Insightful)
My SO had her laptop stolen last year, while on a trip home (to a country far from the US, where we currently live).
Several months later, we hear from the police to say a) that the burglar is in prison awaiting trial and b) they have her laptop. Her sister picked it up, and discovered that it was full of home made pr0n, and we briefly thought of posting some of the highlights on the web. However, the burglar was sitting in prison (and remains there to this day), and we couldn't be bothered humiliating him further, and we had replaced the laptop and restored almost everything on it from the back-up. So I sent the system disks home, her sister did an erase/install, and then sold it on our behalf.
However, this morning I came across this -- not exactly our story, since in this case the perp. has avoided legal trouble (thus far) and the ripoff was via an internet auction, rather than "breaking and entering", but it makes me wonder whether our burglar shouldn't also be the star of his own internet site. Too late now, though....
http://www.amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com] [not completely work safe]
Re:Shame, and Shaming the Shamer (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't live more than a day without a gadget (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyway, how is stealing a sidekick different from stealing anything else and why does it deserve a story ? The phones of several of my friends have been stolen of the years. I had my car CD player stolen a couple of years ago, but you don't see me bitching about it on Slashdot (oops, now you do).
Re:Police? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe not, but posession of stolen property is a felony. They know that it's stolen property. There's a police report filed regarding the stolen property. T-Mobile is apparently going to shut off the service, which means they're convinced it's stolen property.
If this guy really is an MP then he's putting his military career in jeopardy. This is the sort of thing that could get him booted out of the military, possibly after a trip to the brig, and undoubtedly with a dishonorable discharge.
Army dude is toast if he is reported to his CO (Score:5, Insightful)
"listen you dumb mother fucker my sister bought that phone from some cab driver so what the fuck do you want . shes not going to return it if she bought it, and am military police so dont give me that bullshit about you going to the cops over a lost phone the nypd has better things to do then to worry about your friend losing her phone. you better stop harrasing my sister or you'll have to deal with me and you dont want that"
Shows a lack of impulse control, immaturity, and absence of sound judgement: given the mutlple recent international incidents our military has been involved in, I truly hope they take away his weapon privileges, and soon.
I am not a JAG, but, there are about a dozen things they can charge him with there, from 'conduct unbecoming', to making a threat, conspiracy, etc. Not good.
They should turn him over to the grammar and spelling Nazis too....
New trend? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems like a new trend to get things like this "public" in order to get back to the offenders, using the open and more and more community-like nature of the internet.
I wouldn't be surpriced if in a while these you-are-a-criminal-bitch! webpages start popping up plentyful as people seem to feel they "can do something" and hunting the offenders down, having direct result as it exposes them in their own social network (blog/myspace/...) having a bigger impact (a "most in my direct environment and social network dissaproved" vs. "some stupid cop 'caught me'") or perhaps, for some, it's way to be able to mock someone. It's fascinating to see it resembling an old custom where criminals were publically humiliated and displayed on the townsquare for everyone to enjoy.
The guy with the laptop distressed me and I felt relief him getting exposed in his questionable activities. It really looked like the guy explicitely intended to sell some broken laptop and profit off of it. Judging from the pictures though, this girl seems to be rather young and lower class, just wanting to get in on the whole technology gadgets-train and saw an opportunity. I don't approve of it, and think she just should've given the sideKick back without going all racist and intimidating over it. But it seems less of a threat. Although, it appeared she felt "untouchable" by the way she communicated back. I suppose being critisized by a wold-audience personally adressed to you will do more then a criminal record which means in certain circles how "tough" and "gansta" you are.
I do wonder what the long term damage will be as many companies track your name on the internet before hiring...
Re:Can't live more than a day without a gadget (Score:5, Insightful)
If that gadget were her only phone number (which is increasingly the case with people it seems), I can definitely understand.
Re:Go ahead, knock yourself out. (Score:3, Insightful)
Stupid, really stupid.
Re:Beginning to wonder if this is a fake (Score:3, Insightful)
Cynical perhaps... Maybe NASA never did land on the moon... it was all directed by Spielberg!
Re:Stealing how? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the above story actually happened, you could start your career as an amateur lawyer.
Re:Shame, and Shaming the Shamer (Score:5, Insightful)
She got the SIM card in the phone. Sorry but try this out. "Hey want to buy this phone? Yea it is legit don't worry about the pictures already on it. Oh and don't worry about paying for service I will throw that in for you." Yea right...
Followed by
Here is a cell phone babe. Don't worry about the pictures and the account...
Nope this is theft.
"This is a black mark on her life that will follow her around for many years to come. I'm sure she will have to endure some harsh judgement from her peers at school, and I'm not absolutely certain she deserves that."
Why not. Shouldn't one have to bear judgement based on ones own actions? This isn't because of her gender, race, or even nationality. She decided to keep a phone that was stolen. She picked this path. I feel sorry for her child more than anything else.
Re:Beginning to wonder if this is a fake (Score:3, Insightful)
The details are too perfect. Like the conflicting stories, multiple myspace accounts some of which have been deactivated. Unless a person cons for a living they wouldn't think of human nature stuff like that. Some of the T-Mobile stuff jibes, too. Too many good details.
It seems easy to do now that it's been done, but it wouldn't have been easy to setup and coordinate as spontaneously as it has happened.
Besides, I don't doubt he's out of bandwidth what with the combined Digg/Slashdot effect, that kind of stuff can get expensive real quick, and he probably underestimated how expensive.
Where's the service provider in all this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh wait...this way they get to sell another phone. Question answered.
Re:Stealing how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry but have a phone fall out of your purse or your pocket is an accident. Keeping one that you know isn't yours is theft.
Re:Slashdotted already (Score:3, Insightful)
If you believe they bought it off the cabbie then again, back to the first line. The owner has come forward, can prove the phone is his, and wants it back. The cab driver is guilty of selling stolen goods.
Most cabs I've taken don't have discount electronics stores in them. So even if they bought it I'm sure they didn't think to themselves "wow, it's my lucky day. I've come across a splendid opportunity from a respectable legitmate business man."
They're wrong, the owner is right. He's a douche, but he's also right.
Re:Beginning to wonder if this is a fake (Score:3, Insightful)
evanwashere.com:
Evan [last name removed]
68 [Street removed] Hill Rd
[city removed], CT [zip removed]
+1.917[number removed]
[email removed]
I wondered also if this was legitimate but it seems like a lot of effort and risk to take for a few donations. I currently believe it's legitimate - the Internic info has the ring of truth..
Re:Deliberate "Shaming" Should Be Illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you should learn about things before talking about them, both of those respect the robots.txt file and the later has a manual removal page
He called the right number - 911 (Score:3, Insightful)
911 is for "real time" situations. You should call well before it becomes a life-threatening emergency.
In my district, you're not only supposed to call 911 for a fleeing thief, you're supposed to call 911 before they become a thief and flee. I can tell you with certainty that my local police commander would have encouraged people at that gas station to call 911 with a suspicious person report before he stole anything. Think about it, does the guy's panhandling story make any sense (unless it was a bus terminal)?
Re:I had my Verizon Razr V3C stolen last week... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I had my Verizon Razr V3C stolen last week... (Score:2, Insightful)
I hope you don't stop me for doing 5mph over the limit.
I'm having a hard time believing this guy would post something so ill-thought out.
Me too. About you.
qz