An Apple patent application spotted Thursday by AppleInsider shows a system for detecting unusual motion via a portable gadget’s accelerometer which would sound an alarm, making said device harder to steal. The system is a simple one, without the kind of sophisticated face detection we saw in a previous application, but it could be much more effective for curbing thefts at the moment they occur. → Read More
A photographer, John Heller, had $9,000 worth of gear stolen at a shoot in Hollywood. After giving up all hope of ever getting his Nikon D3 back, he checked with a site called GadgetTrak that scans Flickr and other image upload sites for photos matching the serial number of his DSLR.
In a few seconds he had found shots with serial numbers matching his D3 belonging to a professional… → Read More
In what could amount to a very hefty haul, Moscow thieves took a sledge to metal security shutters and then a glass case to grab twenty items including a Leica Pro Set with three lenses. Interestingly, they left a $32,000 Leica S2 on the shelf and, not surprisingly, focused mainly on lenses and the familiar standard M9s.
Serial numbers are after the jump if you ever spot these in the wild. → Read More
Thieves in Malaysia managed to drive off in a truck containing 10,800 Western Digital hard drives. Don’t expect to see the drives hit the market though, Malaysian police were able to identify the culprits, as they used to work at the warehouse the drives were stolen from. The Malaysian news site NST reports that the people driving the truck were in fact waved through security after being… → Read More
It was only a few days ago that I mentioned that, you know, your data is never secure. So, this story isn’t surprising at all. It turns out that the records of more than 3.3 million student loans were stolen a few days ago. Data stolen includes names, Social Security numbers, and credit card numbers. Awesome. → Read More
Here’s a candidate for the Canadian parent of the year award. Police in Richmond B.C. are looking for a couple that used their kids to load up on over $3000 worth of Blu-ray and DVD discs from Future Shop. The estimate is that the couple took between 80 to 100 movies. → Read More
A young man named Jeremy Gillian stole another young man’s XBox 360 in a robbery and then turned it on… with the network and Gamertag intact. The results are as you’d expect: the victim was able to grab the IP, police tracked it to Gillian’s grandmother’s house, and the XBox and a trove of other stolen stuff were discovered. → Read More
Some Netflix news for you this morning. It looks like a 49-year-old post office worker is facing a maximum of five years in federal prison after having plead guilty to federal theft charges. What was he stealing? Oh, you know, some 3,000 Netflix DVDs over the years. → Read More
A postal service supervisor working at a Minneapolis mail distribution center “has admitted taking nearly 16,000 Best Buy reward certificates and using them to buy almost $200,000 in merchandise” between June 2007 and October 2008, according to the Star Tribune. → Read More
Years ago, I read an article in 2600 describing a system that would track down your stolen laptop. Presumably it was all open source software, I can’t remember. GadgetTrak, which is a company that can track down your stolen gadgets, including Mac/PC, iPhone, BlackBerry, and WinMo phone, has a fun success story that’ll kill a few minutes. → Read More
Flickr Who knew? Apparently would-be thieves have a soft spot for baby photos. A research study conducted in Edinburgh found that lost wallets containing baby photos were returned nine out of ten times. → Read More
Did you know that video game theft costs retailers billions of dollars a year? So says the Entertainment Merchant Association, a group that “advance[s] the interests of the $33 billion home entertainment industry.” That’s actual theft, mind you. Like, you walk into a store, swipe a game, put it under your shirt, then amscray. The solution to this problem? Not to lower the price of video games… → Read More
While I’m sure it’s super fun to stuff your gaming console in your carry-on luggage so it doesn’t get stolen, it’s not all that practical. Yale University student Jesse Maiman found that out the hard way when his Xbox 360 disappeared from his checked luggage on a US Airways flight. → Read More
As the U.S. military gets more and more technical, more and more military laptops are finding their way onto the global black market. It’s not really surprising (well, maybe it is), but it’s possible to buy all sorts of military equipment on the black market. But it’s one thing to buy a rocket propelled grenade to use to shoot at someone; it’s another thing entirely to buy a laptop filled with… → Read More
Ha! Remember when the Half-Life 2 source code was stolen a few years ago, showing up all over BitTorrent, IRC and the like? It turns out that Valve, once it was able to determine who was responsible (with the help of the FBI), a German fellow by the name of Axel Gembe, attempted to offer him a job! The company offered him the job in order to lure him to the U.S. so he could be arrested. Gembe… → Read More
If someone asked me to help them steal a gigantic cactus, I’d be like, “Have you ever touched a cactus? Those things are really prickly. Find yourself another cohort, kind sir.” But apparently the giant Saguaro cactus, found mostly in Arizona, can sell for over $1,000 which, in turn, has given rise to a pretty active poaching trade. In order to cut down on such thievery, officials at… → Read More
There was an adorable article in Time magazine last week about Wi-Fi theft. The author, Lev Grossman, admits to being a “Wi-Fi thief” for several years, using his neighbors’ unsecured Wi-Fi without them knowing. He calls it a crime, a direct violation of Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47 of the United States Code. But is that really theft? TechDirt argues that when someone leaves an… → Read More
To quote Boing Boing’s Joel Johnson, “The most amazing gaming story of the year.” A recently released adventure game for the PC, Limbo of the Lost, appears to have stolen content, including artwork and level design, from games like Oblivion and Silent Hill. The game, developed by Majestic Studios—its [down] Web site is hosted on Geocities!—looks like absolute rubbish… → Read More
A couple from Long Island left their camera at a restaurant in Florida where two of the employees found and kept it . The camera contained an Eye-Fi card which automatically found an open wireless base station and began uploading their photos including some photos the thieves had taken of each other. When they contacted the restaurant with the evidence, the camera was returned and the couple… → Read More
Get this. You know how when you have to confirm your bank account with, say, Paypal or Google Checkout or any number of online services that want to make sure the bank account that they’re going to be depositing money into belongs to you? So you’ll generally receive two small deposits — pennies each — that you’ll have to confirm, right? Well some guy used an automated… → Read More
Who stole the sole? Noah “Red Hot” Shachtman wrote a great piece on an iRobot insider who stole the plans for the company’s military Packbot robot and recreated the robot himself, becoming a direct competitor to iRobot. The thief, Jameel Ahed, was frustrated because he wasn’t given full control over the project. He quit the company and, after reworking the design, was able… → Read More
I’m not a fan of UPS, despite it starting in my hometown. They’re late, and when they show up at my apartment with a package (at least once a month) they knock so faintly my dog can’t hear it. Also, they apparently steal video game shipments. At least three UPS employees have been fired in the last 24 hours for stealing copies of GTA IV out of shipping boxes. I’ve always… → Read More
This trick never works, yet people still keep trying it. I’m sure when they come up with the cunning plan they’re very proud of themselves, but they always end up in the pokey in the end. Reginald Newman was at a Wal-Mart and found a 26-inch HDTV that he wanted. You and I, we’d check our bank account and see if we had enough to pay for it. But not crafty Reggie. No, he took the… → Read More
Intel’s upcoming anti-theft technology will be released later this year and will be called “Intel Anti-Theft Technology”. Clever, no? There aren’t a whole lot of details beyond the mind-blowing name except that, according to a recent presentation (PDF) by Dadi Perlmutter, VP of Intel’s mobility group, it’ll “basically lock the system, lock the disk, so… → Read More
Remember the Craigslist scam in Southern Oregon where an unknown person or persons posted asking people to come clear out a house? Well, it was actually supposed to be a way to cover the tracks of two bumbling burglars. Amber and Brandon Herbert originally broke into the property’s garage and as a way to keep from getting caught a post of the Craig’s list ad encouraging folks to come… → Read More
[photopress:iphoneburglar.jpg,full,left]A pair of fools from Salem, MA, have found themselves in jail after stealing 332 iPhones from the Apple Store they worked for and selling them on the black market. Thinking they’d never get caught, the thieves stole and sold for months before being caught. For those keeping score at home, the grand total of their heists: $132,468. → Read More
Sony has issued a warning to gamers in the UK concerning “a possibility of unauthorized access to personal information on the PLAYSTATION Store through PCs.” It didn’t say how the accounts had been accessed but the last line of the message reads, “Remember; do not disclose your log-in or password details on any email communications,” although that could be unrelated. → Read More
Apparently life’s NOT so good at LG nowadays (see how I did that?), as word’s come out that a former manager leaked almost 1,200 secret company files to a Chinese manufacturing company. The company, Changhong-Orion PDP-Chaihong, hired the 49-year old LG manager to give the company secret information in exchange for $300,000 a year, an apartment, and a car. He handed over information… → Read More
We’ve heard tales of people buying electronics, getting them home, and opening them just to find, well, not what they’d purchased. It’s been suggested that store employees had been swinging the ol’ switcharoo, and now a trio of thieving associates at a Best Buy in New Jersey (natch) have been caught red-handed doing just such unlawful misdeedery. Michael Lombardozzi, Jose… → Read More
Oh come on. This is terrible. "Seniors at the Lilac Plaza Retirement Home in North Spokane sold recipe books to raise money to buy a Nintendo Wii," according to news station KXLY. How great is that? Old folks rolling up their sleeves to raise money to buy a video game console that’ll bring near-limitless joy to their otherwise mundane daily routine. → Read More
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