Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 338 posts

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

#31

Post by FireBeyond »

tamimio wrote: post #16
rdtsc wrote: 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…

My guess is the carpenter knows someone that knows someone in the police department that they actually did something, but in a normal situation, definitely they won’t bother.

Yeah, I pointed the police to someone who was selling fifty plus obviously stolen MacBooks and iPhones, including mine (all described as "locked", "no charger, no accessories", etc., etc.) and the could not possibly care less.

"He probably was not the one who stole them."

"Isn't it still a crime to sell stolen goods?"

"Shrug."

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

#32

Post by MisterTea »

k2enemy wrote: 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.

A former coworker came to the USA from Chile with a degree in Molecular Biology but couldn't find work in that field because of his language barrier. Instead he got a shitty job and build a small export company that sold used appliances and other goods from the USA to Chile. A big chunk were things like air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines. Even though Chile is a 50Hz 220V country 60Hz stuff will run off a transformer though sub-optimally which for most people is better than nothing. BUT he also found a more lucrative path by selling gun parts (mostly ammo parts like shell casings) hidden within said appliances. So there is an international market for this kind of stuff.

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

#33

Post by BobaFloutist »

chucksta wrote: post #22
dylan604 wrote: post #15

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 the police are going to be very interested in a random $200 theft.

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

#34

Post by ToucanLoucan »

FireBeyond wrote: post #31
tamimio wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is the carpenter knows someone that knows someone in the police department that they actually did something, but in a normal situation, definitely they won’t bother.

Yeah, I pointed the police to someone who was selling fifty plus obviously stolen MacBooks and iPhones, including mine (all described as "locked", "no charger, no accessories", etc., etc.) and the could not possibly care less. "He probably was not the one who stole them." "Isn't it still a crime to sell stolen goods?" "Shrug."

The roots of police departments are the paid security forces of business owners, and their values as organizations reflect this. Business owners worked with local governments to create police departments to socialize some of the cost of securing their private property; their rented homes, their warehouses, their stores. And they reflect this to this day.

Individual property crime doesn't mean shit. A criminal can sell your Macbook if they like, but if they steal from Apple itself? Oh man there will be hell to pay.

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

#35

Post by wnevets »

k2enemy wrote: 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.

> That is a huge inventory. How do stolen tools get fenced?

Sold in bulk to someone overseas is my theory, way too much effort and risk selling this stuff piecemeal online or locally. You can see something similar happening with stolen cars in the US. [1]

[1] https://abc7ny.com/stolen-cars-tri-state-port-of-newark-west...

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

#36

Post by GeekyBear »

rdtsc wrote: 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 think it's dependent on the local government.

There are cities that have gotten proactive and fought against high car theft rates by handing out free Bluetooth trackers to the public and having people hide them in their car.

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

#37

Post by brailsafe »

brookst wrote: post #14
bhouston wrote: post #3

A good Hollywood caper story would end with this being ultimately engineered by the tool vendors themselves in order to stimulate more demand for their goods.

That would be a good Hollywood ending. Sadly the world has become so credulous that people probably believe nutty conspiracy theories like that today. When two seconds of thought would make anyone realize that the conspiracy story is insane: professionals working at a company literally paying for criminal acts targeting their own customers, in support of a sales increase they could never get credit for, and which wou…

Compared to some stuff that actually seems to happen, the only leap of imagination I see here is that it would bankrupt the company overnight, or that it would matter to the people involved.

Not to say that it's even remotely likely, but all you need is for someone with a vested interest to find a cost effective way to boost sales. Depending on how desperate people and the broader economy are, and how little people care about risk, it's not exactly that farfetched that people will go to insane measures. People will try and pull off ridiculous schemes/crines for relatively small amounts of cash or even social media points and shoulder huge amounts of risk, and then turn around and buy nonsense with it, that's just America.

The person stealing doesn't need to know who hired them, nobody else at the company needs to know did the hiring, shareholders are happy.

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

#38

Post by nickff »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #34
FireBeyond wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I pointed the police to someone who was selling fifty plus obviously stolen MacBooks and iPhones, including mine (all described as "locked", "no charger, no accessories", etc., etc.) and the could not possibly care less. "He probably was not the one who stole them." "Isn't it still a crime to sell stolen goods?" "Shrug."

The roots of police departments are the paid security forces of business owners, and their values as organizations reflect this. Business owners worked with local governments to create police departments to socialize some of the cost of securing their private property; their rented homes, their warehouses, their stores. And they reflect this to this day. Individual property crime doesn't mean shit. A criminal can sel…

Where did you get this idea about the origins of police? It doesn’t agree with the history on Wikipedia, or my understanding of their origin (having more to do with rulers maintaining order). Corporations, and what you call ‘businesses’ are a very modern concept, long predated by rulers, courts, and police.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police

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

#39

Post by bagels »

rdtsc wrote: 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…

It's more sad that your expectations would be met in most places.

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

#40

Post by gwbas1c »

k2enemy wrote: 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.

Makes me wonder if they were having trouble selling? It seems "poor business" to let stolen items sit for up to a decade.
Post reply on HN