At least one in five Engadget staffers can attest: car stereo crime was all the rage in the 1990s, and needless to say, we were all on the losing end of the deal. These days, however, larceny cases involving in-dash head units has dropped dramatically, and we've generally got no one but the auto makers to thank. Back in the day, factory stereos were downright laughable, and considering that most 1- and 2-DIN aftermarket decks could be installed in almost any car, the street value for those puppies was pretty high. Now, it's tough to find a vehicle without a marginally decent player already in it, which has led to a 50 percent decline in reported car stereo thefts over the past 15 years. If we had a gun to our head, we'd guess these folks have all moved on to swiping iPods.

[Via Fark, image courtesy of Notla]

For whatever reason, Apple's iPod ends up in the middle of quite a few crimes. The latest story, however, is even more extreme than usual. Nicholas Arthur Woodhams, a 23 year old from Kalamazoo, Michigan, was recently slapped upside the gord with federal charges of fraud and money laundering after he managed to con Apple into shipping him around 9,000 iPod shuffles. As the story goes, he managed to somehow correctly guess thousands of valid shuffle serial numbers and have replacements shipped to him; once they arrived, he sold them for less than MSRP to excited buyers, all while giving Apple a prepaid VISA number that would reject the charges after he failed to send back the nonexistent "original" shuffle. It's rather amazing to us that he was able to pull this off for so long without being noticed, but even if it works for awhile, we've learned yet again that crime doesn't pay. In fact, the feds have already seized a half million bucks from one brokerage account, some real estate and a trio of vehicles. Tragic, yeah?

[Via Macworld, thanks Steve]

Before you start having a complete panic attack, let us inform you that this whole fiasco actually took place last year, but as these things have a way of going, it's just now coming to light. Reportedly, a 33-year-old captain in the Ground Self-Defense Force ganked a USB flash drive (along with ¥2,000 [$19] and a ¥10,000 [$94] airline coupon) and proceeded to "dump it." Aside from the laughably small amount of cash and prizes this guy accepted, the unfortunate part of all this is what resided on the flash drive: troop deployment maps used in Japan-US military exercises. Worse still, we get the idea that said USB key is still out there somewhere undiscovered (or unrevealed), so if you happen upon one with all sorts of undecipherable schematics on there, now you know what's up.

[Via The Register, image courtesy of University of Texas]

It was inevitable, really. We've seen quick-footed thieves swipe GPS units that eventually led to their arrest, a bank robber who didn't even bother to close his clamshell while holding up the joint and now, we've seen the Eye-Fi card really pay off. According to the outfit's PR firm Red Consultancy, one particular vacationer had her entire stash of camera gear (over $1,000 worth) stolen while taking a load off in Florida. Upon returning home and checking things out, she noticed that all of the snapshots taken prior to the theft were uploaded, and upon closer inspection, she even noticed a clear shot of the remarkably idiotic crook. After syncing up with the boys in blue, all of the gal's equipment was eventually returned, and some semblance of normalcy was finally returned. How's that for a feel good story, huh?

[Image courtesy of Al]

There's depressing gaming stories, and then there are outright travesties. Unfortunately, this case falls squarely into the latter category, as a 7-year old cancer patient had his beloved PlayStation Portable swiped -- right along with his medical records, a backpack full of medication, his games and even his homework -- while en route to a chemotherapy treatment for a tumor in his brain. Apparently the boy's family had stopped at a restaurant while traveling from Oklahoma to Texas, and while inside, thieves had their way with what was left inside the vehicle. Thankfully, authorities from the Dallas police department came to the rescue by purchasing a brand new PSP and raising over $1,000 to repurchase the goods that were lost, and as for the crooks, we'll just trust karma to handle the rest.

[Via PSPFanboy, image courtesy of Flickr]

Apple's no stranger to having its wares ganked (a lot), but this one really has us scratching our noggins some kind of fierce. Apparently a couple of meddlesome 20-somethings working at a Salem, New Hampshire Apple store managed to scoot away with somewhere between 330 and 700 iPhones. After somehow stuffing that many handsets into a panel van / pickup truck / privately owned C-130, they seemingly sweet talked a single high-roller into snatching up their entire stash for upwards of $138,000 -- which could be a bargain (or not) depending on the actual quantity included in the deal, internal capacity, etc. Minutiae aside, both individuals are currently residing under the strong arm of the law (surveillance cameras are hard to dodge), but curiously, nothing is mentioned about the buyer who didn't find spending over a hundred large with a couple of average joes (who just happened to have an inordinately large amount of iPhones for sale) the least bit odd.

[Thanks, Scott]

We've seen some pretty shady dealings from disgruntled ex-employees in the past, but this one may have skyrocketed into the upper echelon of tales of corporate deceit. As the story goes, a 49-year old man known only as Jeong felt the need to copy over some 1,182 top secret plasma display technology-related files onto his personal drive before waltzing out of LG's doors for the final time in July of 2005. A few months later, Chinese manufacturer Changhong-Orion PDP-Chaihong welcomed him with open arms and paid him a fat salary of roughly $300,000 a year (not to mention a few perks: free apartment, vehicle etc.), while casually accepting both the aforementioned files and continued insider leaks at LG -- information supposedly valued at over a billion dollars. But despite Jeong's arrest upon his last return home to Korea, Changhong is still apparently on schedule to produce plasma panels based on LG's technology come this December. Can you say: hot water over international trade-secret law?

[Via The Raw Feed, image courtesy of RPG Classics]

In what might be irrationally described as a wave, rash, flood, or deluge, two separate cases of utter and complete phone theft have cropped up this week. The first concerns $8.2-million worth of T-Mobile handsets which apparently have disappeared from one of the company's warehouses. According to an internal email sent to dealers, someone made off with 36,000 phones (most of which were Sidekicks), and the telco is now in the process of tracking the devices via IMEIs in hopes of getting back the lost goods. In other thievery news, two potential Darwin Award World Stupidity Award recipients plotted to steal 300 iPhones destined for Hong Kong right off of the truck that they were delivering them on. Following the heist, the men quit their delivery jobs, purchased diamond-studded Yankee earrings and matching cars, and then were promptly apprehended when the hastily-wrapped reams of paper they sent instead of the phones were spotted in Cathay. Gold-plated hats off to you, gentlemen.

[Thanks, Paul B]

Read - T-Mobile gets jacked, around $8.2M in phones vanished like a David Copperfield act
Read - Two Baldwin men arrested in stolen iPhone caper

While we've certainly seen a few items get returned without, shall we say, everything in tact, this example just might take the cake. Details are fairly light, but the long and short of it is that some sly customer managed to return an Xbox 360 and get a full refund, but the most critical components weren't repackaged. Reportedly, the store decided to allow the refund just this once without thoroughly checking the innards, and sure enough, the decision came back to bite 'em. Packed within was a gutted console (stuffed with a used textbook, no less), a bunch of totally random cabling and an official Xbox 360 headset. Needless to say, the store got burned torched, but if the culprit received his / her refund as a credit card charge-back and / or was caught on camera, we've all ideas the retailer will get what it's owed one way or another.

[Via Digg]

If a burglar with exquisite taste somehow managed to snag a million dollar Goldvish, asking for just $185,000 for its safe return wouldn't be too far-fetched. Apparently, the mobile in question wasn't of the princely variety, as this particular thief managed to lower his asking price to a rock-bottom $200. The suspect, known initially through police paperwork as "Baby Boy," was lured into a trap after police tagged along for the exchange and arrested him at gunpoint. When Mr. Boy (later found to be Randy-Jay Adolphos Jones, which is only slightly better) was questioned, he just couldn't put a finger on why he blurted out the $185k figure versus something more reasonable, but hey, not everyone can be right on top of current market conditions, right?

[Via The Raw Feed]

Hey, it's no shocker that Apple's iPod is a coveted item even for those who acquire their wares in less than legal manners, but a recent patent application from Apple shows that someone at Cupertino cares about you rightful owners out there. Essentially, the technology would invoke a "guardian" recharge circuit, which would disable any further charging if the computer (or "other recharger") it was paired with was of the unauthorized variety. According to Apple, this type of limitation would "serve as a deterrent to theft," and while we can only assume that it would be applied first to the iPhone and iPod, the application does insinuate that other handheld, rechargeable devices could eventually benefit from the invention.

[Via Slashdot]

We're quite aware of the mayhem that went on during the buildup to the iPhone launch, and while it may cross someone's mind to purloin the oh-so-coveted device just hours before it went on sale to the public, we can't imagine a Fox News microphone being an acceptable substitute. 'Course, we've no way of really reading the vigilante's mind, but a brief iPhone interview was cut even shorter by a random mic stealer. Click on through for the zaniness as it happened, and kudos to the reporter on not just bailing out while she had the chance.

[Thanks, Matt]

We're beginning to wonder if someone isn't adding a little something to the water over in England, as a recent heist of Sigma Imaging's UK offices makes the country home to the second high-stakes consumer electronics robbery this month. The crooks, which were affectionately dubbed a "professional gang," reportedly broke into the offices and warehouse of Sigma UK in order to lift "a large quantity" of wares. So much so, in fact, that Sigma has warned that the incident could "temporarily disrupt supply to customers," but it failed to mention exactly what was stolen. Notably, the culprits must have momentarily forgotten that they were in the surveillance capital of the world, and now police are breaking down CCTV footage in order to garner more details.

We certainly can't say that we'd voluntarily place ourselves on a Segway in order to patrol Long Beach, but officer Jose Miguez managed to utilize the breakneck (ahem) speed available on the two-wheeled Personal Transporter to arrest a horrifically embarrassed 13-year old carjacker. Notably, the Segway was no match for the Mercedes-Benz's engine at first, but after the obviously unlicensed driver and his partners in crime leaped from the car just before it slammed into a utility pole, their worn legs were no match for the potent battery-powered engine. Sure, it doesn't sound like the most exciting police chase ever witnessed or anything, but it's not everyday you see a Segway extending the long arm of the law.

[Via Wired]