robberies
Latest
FedEx delivery person robbed of Apple gear by co-workers
Somehow I think there's an easier way for a FedEx employee to steal electronic goods. Last week, a California FedEx driver was held at gunpoint by four masked men, forced to hand over his delivery truck's shipments. Among the items in the cargo area were boxes of Apple products, though it's not clear what they were. As usual, the suspects bumbled the heist by allowing the license plate of their getaway vehicle to lead right to one of the suspects. One suspect, though, just so happened to be a FedEx employee who worked in the same area as the held-up driver. Apparently he saw what was being loaded in the co-worker's truck and made his hasty plan. So now the question is: were these robbers over-the-top Apple fans, or did they think they could get away selling these on the black market?
English crooks relieve trucks of $2.1 million in Xbox 360s
T'is the season for gift giving, friends and family, spreading yuletide cheer, and...multi-million dollar electronics heists? Proving that Monday's daring theft of over $12 million worth of motherboards and CPUs (now rumored to belong to Intel) from a Malaysian warehouse complex was no fluke, robbers in Staffordshire, England have succeeded in liberating about $2.1 million worth of Xbox 360s from a pair of delivery trucks -- in two separate incidents that occurred nearly a week apart. Although police have so far refused to make a connection between the lorryjackings, the fact that both trucks belonged to the same company -- Hellman Worldwide Logistics -- suggests that the bandits found security so lax on the first go-round that they decided to strike again while the iron was hot. According to reports, the most recent heist began after thieves tricked the truck driver into pulling over due to an object caught under his wheels, where they proceeded to drag him out of the cab, deliver a beating, and leave him injured on the side of the highway. Police are also speculating that, despite their success, the robbers were still of below-average intelligence, which is the only explanation as to why they would try to jack Xbox's instead of the much more lucrative PS3. And, in completely unrelated news, Amazon was somehow able to offer 1,000 360s yesterday for only $100 each.[Via digg]
Organized bandits make off with $12 million worth of PC components
In a daring early morning heist that could just as easily have been a scene from a movie like, um, The Heist, 20-plus well-organized robbers infiltrated a Malaysian warehouse complex on Monday, immediately subdued all 17 employees, and proceeded to steal over $12 million worth of microchips and motherboards. The thieves were able to gain access to the facility through a classic Trojan horse maneuver, wherein drivers of a truck that rolled up to the MASKargo Complex gate in Batu Maung, Penang tricked customs officials into believing that they were doing an undercover sweep for illegal immigrants. Once inside, the rest of the bandits lept out of the back of the vehicle and used chloroform to knock out the passive workers and sticks to beat down the non-compliant ones. It took the team nearly an hour to load up an astounding 18 pallets and 585 cartons full of components belonging to an unnamed multi-national corporation based out of Bayan Lepas, after which they sped off into the night with their valuable, high-tech booty. Police claim to have already captured two suspects in the case -- both were, shockingly , workers at the complex -- and are in the midst of hunting down the rest of the gang that pulled off what was clearly an inside job. As for the copious amount of missing PC hardware, officials speculate that the bandits will either sell them to shady OEMs on the black market, or, more likely, use them to build a supercomputer for leapfrogging to the top of the Folding@Home rankings.[Via The Inquirer]
Methods for escaping robbery with your iPod
It should already be fairly obvious that your iPod is a hot commodity, and the last thing you need is a crazed individual taking a stab at you, or worse, swiping your portable. You've already been warned by the NYPD that rocking the token white headphones is a big no-no, and Thomas Pink even designed a shirt and tie to keep iPod-jackers at bay, but the folks over at CNET UK have a few tricks of their own to keep you from becoming a statistic. As you may or may not be aware, gadget theft in Britain is out of control, and the methods were devised after a CNET UK editor was mugged, not too dissimilar from a situation of our own. The gaffer tape method consists of taping the iPod to your body -- using 15 rounds of tape -- so that your assailant gets frustrated with the challenge and hopefully gives up pursuit, while the paperback method throws back to secrecy of old by suggesting you remove an inner chunk of a novel to let your iPod reside, and since most thieves don't care about bestsellers, you'll likely avoid a tragic conclusion. For owners living in really sketch areas, the Christopher Walken method is nearly foolproof: for Pulp Fiction fans, the iPod's hiding location comes as no surprise. For more clever disguising options to keep you and your Apple tagalong safe, be sure to hit the read link for CNET UK's suggestions, complete with "Anti-mugger" ratings and all.
