[CNN] Stolen Laptops and lame 'solution'

[Raymond Mereniuk]

> How is the buyer responsible even indirectly?
> 
> Someone puts an add in the paper NEC Laptop $1,500. I go and check it out
> and buy it. Should it be my respocibility to call NEC over in Japan and
> 
> If anyone is responcible for the theft other than the theif is the person
> who was so carless with their equipment.
> 
Legally Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) and the courts willl find you 
responsible for being in possession  of stolen property.  If you 
purchased the unit from a storefront or a person selling the unit 
from their home you could deflect responsibility to those parties.  
I would suspect most stolen units are fdisk-ed,  re-formatted, and 
moved a minimum of a state or province and then sold through brokers 
who operate through a pager or cell phone.  The units are sold 
probably more in the range of $600 to $700 CAN Dollars for 486 color 
units and abit  more for Pentium units.  The brokers may offer the 
unit through an auction.

At this point the buyer should start to suspect something is not 
right, the units are too cheap and all the proprietary drivers have 
been removed.  The reason given is that they are being disposed of by 
a large corporation and it is policy to erase all data.  No manuals 
or documentation are offered with the unit.  Normally when you 
purchase an unit from the original retail buyer manuals and 
documentation and extras would be included with the unit and the 
seller would probably be willing to show you the bill of sale.  Would 
you buy a car from a seller offering no documentation or proof of 
ownership.

It is tough to take the argument that stolen notebooks are the fault 
of the victim seriously.  Notebook thieves can be pretty 
enterprising.  They walk into offices dressed as maintainance people, 
buy pass keys from the real maintainance people and go through every 
office.  A friend had a notebook taken from a locked office in a 
supposedly secure area, no signs of break and entry so no insurance 
coverage and there were notebooks and computers taken from three 
locked offices in the middle of the day.  So in this case it was my 
friend's fault for doing business in a shared office environment 
where someone had sold a pass key to the thief??  

If there was no market for stolen notebooks thieves would not steal 
them as there would be no gain.  In my experience most people selling 
merchanise of doubtful origins are not sophisticated, ask lots of 
questions and their stories quickly fall apart.  I have walked away 
from many deals when the origin of the goods were not clearly 
explained and I would suggest you do the same.

Virtually

Raymond Mereniuk
Raymond at wcs.net