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

How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist

petapixel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 170 posts

Re: How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist

#111

Post by zerr »

curveship wrote: post #80

In two decades of bike commuting, I've had my bicycle stolen three times, and with a lot of effort and a lot of luck I've recovered it all three times. #1: I was 19 and had ridden it to a local swimming hole, stashing it in the woods. That sounds dumb, but this was in a county of only 4,000 residents, so you didn't expect much theft. When I came back, it was gone. How it was recovered: that same day, I went to every…

We don't have listserve here. Sounds like a good service.

I'm sorry for the pawnshop buyer. Why didn't police follow the thread? I suppose pawnshop owner should have compensate her.

Re: How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist

#112

Post by justincormack »

hoprocker wrote: post #99
curveship wrote: post #80

In two decades of bike commuting, I've had my bicycle stolen three times, and with a lot of effort and a lot of luck I've recovered it all three times. #1: I was 19 and had ridden it to a local swimming hole, stashing it in the woods. That sounds dumb, but this was in a county of only 4,000 residents, so you didn't expect much theft. When I came back, it was gone. How it was recovered: that same day, I went to every…

Amazing that your bike was stolen 3 times and recovered! Only one of my many friends whose bikes have been stolen have ever found it again. Moral of the story: lock up your bike. Or, if a bike is unlocked in the woods, is it still stealable?

A friend of mine found his bike being ridden by the thief a week later and retrieved it. In London, not a small town...

Re: How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist

#113

Post by bwooce »

kelnos wrote: post #108
ceol wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're counting the loss of the merchandise. So a chargeback for a $10,000 TV would be like losing $10,000 plus whatever the cost of the TV was for the store.

But it's not. Getting paid $10k and giving it back is net zero.

Not when you could have sold the TV for $10K. This is the shoplifting issue; the shop loses both the product and the potential profit on the product.

It gets a bit existential e.g. can you lose what you never really had? But even if you fall on the NO side of that, the cost of re-obtaining a product is not zero.

Re: How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist

#114

Post by s_baby »

moepstar wrote: post #101
xlance wrote: post #39

I have a similiar story. Left my laptop in the car, came back and found the window smashed. Had installed Prey on the laptop, and after jogging around the neighborhood (wearing a suit straight from work) for half an hour I get a e-mail. Location, picture of the guy - everything. I run down to catch a cab, but then I suddenly see a police car. Wave them over, they call up another squad car that was 50 meter away from…

I've also got Prey installed on my MBP, however for it to "properly" work (i.e. for it to be able to log into a wireless network) the laptop needs to be unlocked after it wakes up from sleep, something i still hesitate to do. So i presume yours was set to just wake up and be ready to be used without password etc.?

Set a guest account.

Re: How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist

#115

Post by icebraining »

jdaley wrote: post #71
aaron695 wrote: post #28

You have to be carefully with stories like this, often the reason they go viral is not for nice reasons. To me it seems the enjoyment is someone gets hurt and we get to be guilt free in doing it because the hurt person is 'clear cut' bad. Sure that's why we enjoy most movies and computer games, but I think taking it to real life is a step again. There's a nasty undercurrent in these sort of things on the internet lik…

Everyone should keep this in mind. I find the Nigerian scammer-scammer stories entertaining because of the vigilantism, but it's perverse entertainment knowing that many of the scammers are driven to it by desperation. Likewise, I got a kick out of this article, but we don't know the thief's personal situation. The author handled the situation fairly and doesn't revel in the revenge, but vigilantism and revenge is th…

How was this vigilantism? The only people who applied a sanction to the thief were cops; he never used force or meted out any kind of extralegal punishment.

Re: How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist

#116

Post by robbiep »

How good are stories of recovery.

My bike was stolen from the hospital where I'm a student. 3 years of going there and never a problem, this night I walked outside and my bike was gone.. The thief had kindly left the chain lying ont be ground where he had cut it.

2 months later and I still hadn't given up on my beautiful 3 yr old trek road bike, Red Lightning. On a whim I checked eBay about 3am (late night studying) and listed all bikes in Sydney.

At 100 per page you can get through them fairly quickly.

Red was on the 6th page with my custom parts still attached. Called he police who came around at 3.30 in the morning- gave them the website, emailed them my serial number and other photos and they went around the next day and recovered it for me-

Such a win!

Unfortunately still took another 2 months to get it back from the police, but it came back and is still with me to this day

Re: How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist

#117

Post by icebraining »

aaron695 wrote: post #47
OGinparadise wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always remember more often than not the people participating in these crimes do it due to mental illness or desperation. Uh OK, we should accept the loss of our hard earned cash /stuff because some thief is depressed and needs the money. Confronting them can lead to bigger issues, jail for example and it's harder to argue self-defense when you went there, but they surely do need a thorough beating. Stay the hell away…

To quote myself above 'I'm not saying let them get away with it' I didn't even say not to beat them. If beating them is what you have to do, so be it. All I said was the greater community shouldn't celebrate it. My point is I think these style of stories are glurge and I think people need to try and be aware of that. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Glurge

Well, the thief was arrested; in a decent system, that would mean that possible mental illnesses would be identified and (s)he would be offered help.

Of course, I realize this is mostly wishful thinking.

Re: How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist

#118

Post by icebraining »

bwooce wrote: post #113
kelnos wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not. Getting paid $10k and giving it back is net zero.

Not when you could have sold the TV for $10K. This is the shoplifting issue; the shop loses both the product and the potential profit on the product. It gets a bit existential e.g. can you lose what you never really had? But even if you fall on the NO side of that, the cost of re-obtaining a product is not zero.

The cost of re-obtaining the product is $7k, which were already accounted for. Marginal administrative costs are negligible.

Re: How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist

#119

Post by billpg »

curveship wrote: post #80

In two decades of bike commuting, I've had my bicycle stolen three times, and with a lot of effort and a lot of luck I've recovered it all three times. #1: I was 19 and had ridden it to a local swimming hole, stashing it in the woods. That sounds dumb, but this was in a county of only 4,000 residents, so you didn't expect much theft. When I came back, it was gone. How it was recovered: that same day, I went to every…

"stashing it in the woods" ... "they'd found it abandoned in some woods."

Are you sure you didn't just forget where you left it?

Re: How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist

#120

Post by switch007 »

elliottcarlson wrote: post #62

A few years ago, my wife made a mistake and left her purse in her class room as she went out for a smoke break - while it was a pretty poor decision to leave her purse unattended, this was a class of about 10 students that she thought she could trust. As she was driving back home, she realized she didn't have any money for the toll to cross over the bridge - which should not have been the case. Luckily the toll booth…

"In the end the class mate was trying to buy Playstation 3s to be able to sell, so she could pay off the fines that she received for committing identity theft when she was a minor"

Sounds like jail time was going to put her back on the right track in life. I wonder how she wound up after jail?

Post reply on HN