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Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

washingtonpost.com

21–30 of 338 posts

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#21
post #19

Did the carpenter alter the tags?! Afaik they beep sounds around other unpaired iphones, additionally, using apps like AirGuard can alarm you about such ones.

If they were in a storage unit, the thief may not have stuck around long enough to notice. And it sounds like this happened pretty soon after theft, so they wouldn’t have started to beep.

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#22

The logistics of this is kind of interesting to me. Even if each of the victims reported them to the police, the value of the items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. Construction equipment might raise more of an eyebrow, but the hand tools would even be noticed. Unless...someone was collecting all of those reports and analyzing them bigData style, o wait, we're talking about the p…

> Even if each of the victims reported them to the police, the value of the items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things.

I don't think you know how expensive commercial power tools and accessories are.. They cited 15k items with a range of 3-5 million. At 3 million that's $200 an item. Hardly peanuts.

The article also says the tools likely came from a variety of sources

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#23
post #7

That is a huge inventory. How do stolen tools get fenced? Sent abroad? Craigslist and FB marketplace? I've bought some used tools from online classifieds, but it always seems to be a homeowner or business owner selling one or two things.

Every flea market I have ever been to in my life always has some guy with a huge amount of lightly used and heavily assorted high-dollar power tools.

Before Home Depot started putting tools in cages, I used to see a lot of craigslist/marketplace/etc postings for brand new and unopened tools, posted at amazing prices.

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#24

The logistics of this is kind of interesting to me. Even if each of the victims reported them to the police, the value of the items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. Construction equipment might raise more of an eyebrow, but the hand tools would even be noticed. Unless...someone was collecting all of those reports and analyzing them bigData style, o wait, we're talking about the p…

> Even if each of the victims reported them to the police, the value of the items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. I don't think you know how expensive commercial power tools and accessories are.. They cited 15k items with a range of 3-5 million. At 3 million that's $200 an item. Hardly peanuts. The article also says the tools likely came from a variety of sources

I don't think you know anything about me to claim I don't know the value of tools commercial or not. I have quite the collection, come from a family of construction where my grandfather was a custom cabinet maker where I grew up in his woodshop. It's amazing how people just assume so wildly wrong.

Even at $200, that doesn't even qualify as anything more than a misdemeanor. The police are just not going to care if the victim even bother reporting it. I've had my battery powered lawn equipment stolen within the time it took me to push my mower to the front of the house and then walk back to the garage to grab the now stolen items. Of course I didn't report it to the police. Why would I waste my time as well as theirs? I even specifically qualified some equipment like construction equipment would potentially raise an eyebrow implying their value is more than my weekend warrior power tools.

Talking about totally being so far off base, and missing the point that you even attempt to use math to get to. However, even your math totally misses the point. If you think $200 gets the police excited, you are grossly putting too much faith in the system. It doesn't matter at all that somebody else thinks $200 is hardly peanuts. It doesn't move the needle at all in motivating someone doing some investigating. That is the point I was making. It's the perfect crime to run for a long time as even if it is reported, nobody is going to do anything about it.

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#25
post #11

> He called police, who got a search warrant Kind of sad, that I was surprised they did that. It's definitely a local thing. I'd expect the police to shrug, and say it's too bad, just file a report to use for insurance. I remember people saying "so what if you have tags, police won't do anything and you shouldn't be confronting thieves anyway". Apple, on the other hand, is also explicit about tags not to be used as a…

I guess tracing the stolen property to a huge storage facility vs house makes a big difference to the district attorney.

Big time vs. small beans

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#26

The logistics of this is kind of interesting to me. Even if each of the victims reported them to the police, the value of the items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. Construction equipment might raise more of an eyebrow, but the hand tools would even be noticed. Unless...someone was collecting all of those reports and analyzing them bigData style, o wait, we're talking about the p…

> Even if each of the victims reported them to the police, the value of the items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. I don't think you know how expensive commercial power tools and accessories are.. They cited 15k items with a range of 3-5 million. At 3 million that's $200 an item. Hardly peanuts. The article also says the tools likely came from a variety of sources

It's all relative. The above commenter was comparing to construction equipment.

https://www.deere.com/en/loaders/skid-steers/334-p-skid-stee...

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like the mostly likely way, at least for the new items stolen from retail. Trying to sell on craiglist/FB marketplace doesn't seem like it would scale. An unscrupulous hardware store owner could mix the stolen goods in with their stock to pad their margins. The tools could also be used as stock for 3rd party seller on Amazon.

The Amazon marketplace seller is what I thought would be the most used route. Selling overseas would require hardware changes with the plugs I would think which would probably not be something they're willing to do. Unless it's common to use adapters or have people make that mode themselves as part of the "but it was cheap"??? Amazon marketplace is one of the best fences of all time.

> Selling overseas would require hardware changes with the plugs

Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, and a few other Central/South American countries can plug these tools right into the wall.

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#28

The logistics of this is kind of interesting to me. Even if each of the victims reported them to the police, the value of the items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. Construction equipment might raise more of an eyebrow, but the hand tools would even be noticed. Unless...someone was collecting all of those reports and analyzing them bigData style, o wait, we're talking about the p…

> tired of the cops being unable to do anything

The cops literally raided the place when it was reported

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Amazon marketplace seller is what I thought would be the most used route. Selling overseas would require hardware changes with the plugs I would think which would probably not be something they're willing to do. Unless it's common to use adapters or have people make that mode themselves as part of the "but it was cheap"??? Amazon marketplace is one of the best fences of all time.

> Selling overseas would require hardware changes with the plugs Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, and a few other Central/South American countries can plug these tools right into the wall.

For whatever reasons, my mind equates overseas with Europe and even Eastern Europe more specifically when it comes to trading in illicit wares. In my mind, any where in the Americas just isn't overseas.

But you are absolutely right in that a lot of stolen items do end up in that part of the world.

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#30

The logistics of this is kind of interesting to me. Even if each of the victims reported them to the police, the value of the items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. Construction equipment might raise more of an eyebrow, but the hand tools would even be noticed. Unless...someone was collecting all of those reports and analyzing them bigData style, o wait, we're talking about the p…

> tired of the cops being unable to do anything The cops literally raided the place when it was reported

Because they were specifically shown the guy's items were there. They didn't find it for him. They took the data provided, asked for a warrant, and then proceeded from there. How is that confusing? It's not like they were expecting to find what they did. I'm actually surprised they even did that. There are lots of stories of people showing the police their Find It showing their device at a specific location and doing not a damn thing with that information.
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