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thief posts

Lenovo's Lost & Found looks to guilt trip thieves into returning your ThinkPad

by Darren Murph posted Sep 30th 2009 at 7:36PM

So, a little situation for you. You leave your ThinkPad in the third row of waiting seats at Jackson Hole Airport, already distraught that you're departing Winter Wonderland and heading back to reality. A kindhearted Wyomian happens upon it, and clearly recognizes that he / she should figure out a way to return it. If you're signed up for the gratis Lost & Found service (which does require a subscription to Absolute Computrace), the finder will spot a 1-800 number on the outside of the ThinkPad or on the display as it's powered on. From there, he / she simply dials the aforementioned number, waits for the free pre-paid box to arrive, ships it off to Lenovo (to protect your address, naturally) and basks in the satisfaction of knowing that Lenovo will handle the shipping to you. Sound good? Great -- it's now available on all ThinkPads enabled with Absolute Software's Computrace. Phew!

Continue reading Lenovo's Lost & Found looks to guilt trip thieves into returning your ThinkPad

Video: crooks clean out New Jersey Apple store in 31 impressive seconds

by Darren Murph posted Sep 3rd 2009 at 1:55AM

And you thought making off with 39 iPods in 15 seconds was something to behold. After studying said crooks in Utah, a trained team of larcenists headed over to Apple's Sagemore location in Marlton, New Jersey in order to one-up the duo by snagging even more goods in under a minute. As the surveillance shows, a single blunt object decimated the iconic glass doorway and enabled five hyped-up thieves to enter, snag 23 MacBook Pros, 14 iPhones and 9 iPod touches, and head for the hills -- all in just 31 seconds. Look, we aren't trying to glamorize crime or anything, but this is the stuff GTA heists are made of. Head on past the break for a look at the video, and please, don't try to replicate this at your nearest Apple store (without wearing a head-mounted camcorder and hooking us up with the footage, of course).

[Via TUAW, thanks Mike]

Continue reading Video: crooks clean out New Jersey Apple store in 31 impressive seconds

ASUS equips P30 and P80 laptops with Intel's Anti-Theft Technology

by Darren Murph posted Apr 11th 2009 at 6:40PM

Remember Intel's Anti-Theft Technology that debuted around this time last year? You know, that wicked cool invention that you've heard absolutely nothing about ever since? Evidently it's still alive and kickin', as ASUS has just announced that two of its lappies will come loaded with it. The P30 and P80 will both arrive with the so-called theft deterrent system, enabling owners to send a "poison pill" (it's words, not ours) remotely, rendering their computer inoperable by "comprehensively shutting it down." If you manage to reacquire it in one piece, a passphrase can be inputted in order to reactivate things. Still, we have to wonder how this will really detract thieves from snapping up unattended machines -- we mean, do they really stop to check out the anti-theft software before wheeling away with your rig? We're guessing not.

[Via HotHardware]

Car stereo thieves looking elsewhere to make those ends

by Darren Murph posted Mar 25th 2009 at 7:41AM

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]

Scammer shuffles Apple out of 9,000 iPods

by Darren Murph posted Mar 22nd 2009 at 3:36AM

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]

FakeTV emulates human watching the tube, supposedly discourages thieves

by Darren Murph posted May 21st 2008 at 11:41AM

What else can we say? The concept here is pure genius, and it totally makes those pricey security systems seem way pointless (okay, slightly less critical). The FakeTV is a strobe that sets up in an occupied room at night and flashes up beams of light. From the inside, we can imagine it looks fairly curious, but from the outside, it gives prospective burglars the idea that someone is actually awake and watching a television program. It promises to produce the effects of "scene changes, fades, swells, flicks, on-screen motion and color changes," just like they were generated by a bona fide set. We can't speak for how well (or not) this thing actually works, but at just $49, we'd say it's a solid buy if you're the paranoid type.

[Via BoingBoing]

Mexican attach� attempts to make off with White House BlackBerrys

by Darren Murph posted Apr 25th 2008 at 8:01AM

We're a bit frightened by the fact that high-ranking political officials are told to leave their BlackBerrys outside in an unguarded basket during high-level meetings (really, it's "common practice"), but nevertheless, one chap who tried to take advantage of the situation didn't quite make it out undiscovered. During a recent political meetup in New Orleans, a Mexican press attaché managed to slip a half dozen or so BlackBerrys into his pocket before darting to the airport with visions of black market markups in his head. Before he could exit the country, however, Secret Service had tracked him down after catching him via surveillance footage. As it stands, the responsible individual has been fired from his post, but there's been no word on whether the US will take any further actions. Reevaluating the whole "leaving them out in the open" practice may be a good start -- just sayin'.

[Via The Boy Genius Report]

Robber holds up bank, doesn't bother to get off his cellphone

by Darren Murph posted Apr 17th 2008 at 6:14AM

Make no mistake, we've seen some fairly boneheaded moves (even someone rocking this very same gaffe!) made by technologically-illiterate bank robbers, but the latest case involves a fellow who was quite the opposite of that. Yes, the 20 to 25 year male who decided to hold up an Alabama bank the day before his taxes were due actually did the deed without hanging up his cellphone. And there's surveillance footage to prove it. Quite honestly, we can't imagine what the conversation here would've been like, but at least he made the most of whatever minutes he had remaining as a free man, right?

[Via textually]

Cancer patient has PSP stolen en route to chemotherapy treatment

by Darren Murph posted Mar 30th 2008 at 9:00AM

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]

Former LG employee leaks $1b in top secret plasma info to Chinese manufacturer

by Darren Murph posted Mar 5th 2008 at 8:02PM

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]

Xbox 360 returned, critical components not included

by Darren Murph posted Nov 22nd 2007 at 3:49PM

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]

Identity thief busted by calling tech support for his stolen driver's license printer

by Nilay Patel posted Oct 23rd 2007 at 9:02AM

You know, if you don't know how to use a gadget, you probably shouldn't go to the trouble of stealing it, because your ass is as good as busted when you call tech support. In the latest case of a criminal not grasping this simple concept, a genius known as Timothy Scott Short stole a Digimarc printer used by the state of Missouri to print driver's licenses and casually called the company to procure the needed software drivers -- which caught the attention of the Secret Service agents already investigating him for identity theft. Digimarc isn't saying how the Secret Service knew Short had called, but since the printer can only be used to print Missouri IDs, it's safe to say they might have had a hunch.

Crook demands $185k in ransom for stolen cellphone

by Darren Murph posted Oct 17th 2007 at 11:04PM

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]

Apple wants your iPod to stop charging for thieves

by Darren Murph posted Jul 28th 2007 at 6:56PM

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]

Reporter has mic stolen during iPhone interview, recovers ungracefully

by Darren Murph posted Jul 2nd 2007 at 3:18AM

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]

Continue reading Reporter has mic stolen during iPhone interview, recovers ungracefully