gj83

Last week my house was broken into. The robbers made off with
Epson HD projector
Dell desktop
Toshiba Laptop
Dell laptop
several external hard drives
Wii
PS3
Free Linux dist. cd that came with a magazine

They did not, however, take a docking station still in the box, esata cord still in packaging, an esata adapter still in packaging, TV tuner still in packaging, HD webcam which would be worth more than the hard drives.

..mainly they seemed after hard drives which seemed odd to me considering this breakin did not come with a love note from the FBI or anything else like that.

I've been checking Craigslist and ebay, but what other places do people go to sell stolen computers hard drives? The only crimes in my area seem to involve computers and computer accessories and these people seemed to look for particular items since they took my Dell D620 but not my ancient D600. Charlotte Police couldn't be bothered in the slightest to help us.

cordelli

It's being sold in the back of a truck, taken to a pawn shop, or some other direct channel. Most thieves know the police are constantly watching all the online sites and the rest, so they are selling it to somebody for $50 who will sell it to somebody else for $75, etc.

If it was just hard drives, it could be they are teamed up with a repair facility who is buying them, they pay $20 or so, and when somebody brings in a machine needing a drive or an upgrade, they install your freshly formatted drive into their machine.

If they were anything but stupid kids from down the street, you will probably never see your stuff listed on the normal buying sites.

DisneyDude

Have you realized that also there can be a lot of personal, often un-encrypted, information on either internal or external hard drives. That can also make these items interesting to crooks, and they would not be sold through any normal channels.

gj83

There was a ton of stuff laying around with personal information and those were not taken...but yes, I know about all the stuff that is on my drives. Either they have not connected the device to the internet or they reformatted right away because logmein has not registered the device. These people seem to know what they are doing and what they are after.

Braindrain

Yup, sounds like a very targetted B&E.

Maybe after your work files? (Dunno where you work.)

gj83

No. most of what was stolen is DH's personal computers. He had no work stuff on them...just bluray rips and tv shows. they didn't steal actual blurays though.

This was very targeted. I had been home for a week, flew out monday, B&E happened tuesday right after DH left for work. We have no neighbors and no where besides our property to scope out the place.

Time Warner had a couple vans on our land 2 weeks ago. No vans this week, but our road is being resurfaced so no one can park along the road.

Thieves also stole a couple prescription medications so the odds of a time warner raid for torrenting seem less.

clrankin

Could TW actually do that? It seems a bit over-the-line (and illegal) for a private company to do. Wouldn't they just involve the police instead?

gj83

I doubt TW would do that without some kind of cease and desist notice first and definitely not without some government agency (police, FBI, something like that). There are legal torrents out there such as linux distributions which I have downloaded. Most of our other traffic is routed through encrypted channels.

It could have been completely random (most of the robbers in CLT seem to hit when the home owner is home and the homeowner shoots the perp). It could have been the pizza guy who made a comment about our screen. It could have been people in mocked up TW vans. It could have been corrupt TW employees.

I've resigned to the fact that my stuff is gone. It wasn't worth it to file a claim either since most of the stuff doesn't need to be replaced and i'd rather not make a claim for only a couple thousand over my deductible.

I consult to hospitals so at one point the stolen d20 laptop did have PHI but i wiped all that stuff when we changed our policies about accepting client databases.

Tummy

I have several webcams monitoring the exterior and some interior rooms in my house. We run Vitamin D software from http://www.vitamindinc.com/ that emails me whenever there is activity based on rules I setup. It saves the video files to a wireless NAS that I hid in my ceiling so if something happens I can at least review it later. My co-workers call me paranoid.

Our next door neighbor was robbed maybe 7 months ago. The crooks opened their garage door and pulled the van right in. Nobody was home except the dog, a german shepherd, which they beat up with a baseball bat.

adambadam

I have some software on my computer now called Prey (http://preyproject.com/) which sits in the background and can be remotely activated when a computer is lost or stolen, it free and open source. If the thief connects the computer to the internet it can be triggered to take a picture if there is a web cam and it will capture other information like IP address etc that could be useful for law enforcement. I realize this info is a little late now, though thought I would throw it out there for everyone to be aware of.

clrankin

I feel sorry for the dog, and can only imagine what I'd do if I came home and found my pup beaten, killed, etc. by burglars. Suffice it to say that at that point the least of their fears would be getting caught and penalized with jail time by the police.

Jimmie76

I think I would do a lot worse to them than just a baseball bat if I found a dog in that condition, a lot worse.
That does sound targeted because when my folks were victims, the guy was hunting around for the boxes stuff came in to make it easier to sell (My dad woke up and chased him). The police said that if they have the boxes the people buying the stuff are more likely to feel the items aren't nicked. Sorry you got hit in this way and I hope you manage to recover the stuff.

wiredboy10003

Not to be a pain, but to be clear, it's a robbery if you were home and they demanded stuff from you. It's a burglary if no one was home.

gj83

The Wii was apparently in the Wii box. They left the box on a bed and took the Wii.


Thank you, I didn't know that distinction because I had never been in either situation before.

youreadyfreddie

Oh now THAT's just heinous! Take the stuff you want, but don't hurt the dog, you creeps! Sheesh. I hope those creeps get what they deserve for doing that to the dog.

--A car break-in story that turned out better than anyone in my neighborhood expected. Several years ago, a neighbor's kid (about 18 at the time) had his car broken into while parked in our development one night. He called the local police and asked them to come out and complete a report. They balked. The kid insisted, so the cops begrudgingly came out, took a report, dusted for fingerprints, and that was that. A year or two later, they busted a guy for something and when they took his prints and ran them through the system, his prints came up as a match for the ones taken at the scene of the neighbor kid's car break in, and they tagged the guy for THAT as well as whatever the current crime was.

I was very impressed that the neighbor kid stuck to his guns and insisted that the cops come out when they initially tried to blow him off.