Comment by GabrielF00
13 years ago
About five years ago I worked in an office that was above a physical therapy place. Sometimes patients would sneak upstairs and steal a laptop. We were able to recover one laptop: the guy who stole it sold it to a kid for $50 and when the kid came home, his Dad made him tell how he'd gotten it. The Dad found our number and said he'd give us back the laptop for the $50 his kid spent, which we were happy to do. Another time a laptop was stolen the thief wasn't smart enough to take the power cord.
I guess if you're desperate enough that you're willing to commit a crime for $50 then stealing a laptop is a better idea than robbing a convenience store but you still have to be pretty desperate.
A power supply is $70 retail from the OEM versus $500-1000 for the entire device. Unplugging and carrying a cable may have increased the risk of detection.
Passing morphine withdrawal is an interesting experience. I tried once, and it was by far the most physically intense pain I have ever experienced. Even with the most powerful sedative I could only cry in pain. If I was out of luck and on the streets I'd steal stuff to avoid it again. (Not that I would. Even entry-level coding is enough to avoid a junkie lifestyle. I did it just for the experience. Also, I gave up after a few hours.)
1. Steal laptop.
2. Call victim and claim your kid bought stolen laptop for $50 and 'fessed up.
3. Claim you'd give it back for said $50
4. Profit $50.
4a. Appear innocent.
Fencing is illegal. If you have my laptop, you have to give it back to me, or you are yourself a criminal.
If, on the other hand, the scenario was real, why would I reimburse your kid's foray into stolen goods? He got the $50 in the first place, he spend them on crime, he should "do the time".
Amazingly, I think this is actually almost feasible, at least with regard to the "fencing" of the stolen product. If you only attempted to swindle $50 out of someone with this, it would very likely have a very high success rate.
Unfortunately, the economics don't work out w/respect to the risks/overhead involved in the theft of said product.
Unfortunately?
Why would he do it if he can just ebay/cgl it for $200?
"Claim you'd give it back for said $50"
So now the father is in it too ?
Plot Twist: there never was any "kid"
or return it and we wont press charges of possession of stolen property.
Knowing that the problem will be immediately resolved is well worth $50.
The cops were happy to come and take a report but they never seemed all that interested in solving the crime (doubtless its a very low priority). In the other stolen laptop case a wallet was also stolen and the thieves used a credit card at a gas station. We gave that information to the officer but we could never get them to return phone calls. If we had threatened the guy with arrest we probably wouldn't be able to actually back up that threat. Why risk the cost of a new laptop plus the loss in productivity of setting up a new laptop, worrying about what information was on the hard drive, etc?
It's sad to think that a person can get away with a property crime in a medium-sized city and the cops will be indifferent, but that's the way it is.
if i had been the kid that bought a laptop for 50 dollars, and should have known it was to good to be true. I dont think getting my 50 dollars back would have been part of the conversation my dad had with the company that the laptop belongs to.
Yeah but back then laptops would have been in the $1000-2000 range generally. Even without a PSU I would imagine you'd get at least $100-200 from a pawnbroker.
IMO if youre robbing or stealing then you're generally pretty desperate or have an addiction of some sort.