Stolen U.C. Berkeley Laptop Recovered

linuxwrangler writes "Following up on a previous Slashdot story, the laptop with personal data on 98,000 former U.C. Berkeley grad students which was stolen in March has been recovered. Shuki Alburati, A San Francisco State freshman who makes money selling computers and cell-phones online, says he bought the laptop for $300 from a woman who fits the description of the suspect in the original theft. The drive was reformatted and investigators can't tell if the personal info was accessed but they have believed all along that the thief was only interested in the computer. Alburati, who says he was suspicious of someone looking to sell an expensive laptop so cheaply, nonetheless took the woman's word that laptop was not stolen. He then resold the laptop on eBay for $1,159 - just $18,805 short of his bail after police arrested him."

Comments

Theft

[mysqlrocks]

he bought the laptop for $300 from a woman who fits the description of the suspect in the original theft

I don't think she would have bothered selling the computer if she was interested in the data. I'm sure the data is worth much more than $300 to the right person.

Re:Better Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Reg. links makes slashdot cry :(

Re:I'm confused

[Mr. Underbridge]

It's illegal to buy a laptop from someone if it turns out that laptop was stolen, even if you didn't know that when you bought it? Is it also illegal for me to think that's excessive?

Well, currently he's the only person linked to said laptop in a definitive manner. And for what it's worth - though impossible to prove - if you believe him when he says he didn't know it was stolen, I've got a rather large bridge to sell you in a lovely area of New York.

This guy's making money by selling laptops and cell phones online. He's a fence.

Security 101 folks

[msaver]

Personal information of nearly a hundred thousand former students has no business whatsoever on a laptop.

Who let this happen? Sheesh... you'd think the birthplace of the *BSD's could work out something a little safer than putting others' personal data on a tiny device that screams "steal me! steal me!" OpenSSH is good (w/ X tunneling if needed) and Remote Desktop (preferably tunneled though SSH) will do the job.

Re:I'm confused

[dougmc]

A woman shows up with a laptop worth 4 times the price (in used condition, never mind new) and that would not raise a red flag or two?

Yes, but people do sell stuff for a fraction of it's value on a regular basis. If you need $250 right now to bail your boyfriend out of jail, you might sell a laptop for $250 when you know that you might get $1000 for it on eBay if you listed it now and waited seven days. Or maybe she just has no idea what it's actual value is, and just think `it's an old laptop, can't be worth much.'

Or maybe she doesn't doesn't really care -- after all, getting top dollar for something is a lot of work, and requires some skill. If you're selling on eBay, you have to write up a good description, work out your exact specifications of what you're selling, have a good feedback rating, etc. `Top dollar' rarely just falls into your lap, unless you find a sucker. And lots of people are unwilling to go to the extra trouble, even if doing the math means that your two hours of extra work gets you $400 extra, meaning you made $200/hr. People rarely work out the math like that.

Just because something is cheap, that doesn't mean it's stolen. Yes, it should make you consider that as a possiblity, but it's certainly not a given.

His crime was trust

[RocketRainbow]

Who ARE you people?

The general Slashdot opinion is
*He was a thief because he bought something at a low price with the intention of selling it - without caring whether it might be non-legitimate

*He was stupid because his greed stopped him from seeing that it was clearly stolen and he could go to jail

You know what? People sell things cheaply all the time! I'd be more concerned at $300 that the thing was a lemon - it would never cross my mind that it had been stolen. I'm an honest person - a fundamentalist. I believe that using a stolen computer is bad karma for me - but you ask and you have to trust other humans. Otherwise you're just another hater.

So you ask the person "why are you selling it?"

And the person answers "Well I'm about to go overseas, I need to get cash pronto for an operation, my wife left me and I'm buying her out of the house" or whatever story the person has. If it's not a valid reason, then you apply your ethical belief appropriately (with extra caution for merchants!)

What sort of paranoid fool checks up on every arrangement she makes? Who does it take to say "I don't believe you - prove that you don't know the value of this item!"

Pawn shops are always full of great deals on specialist items such as camera lenses, because even pawnbrokers don't know the value of things. So why distrust someone selling a computer?

Are you really all so caught up in this culture of fear that you check and double-check everything you do? Just in case the Thought Police come and take you away?

What next? I know, you won't be able to buy a hard drive because what if it once contained copies of songs? In fact, you won't be able to buy the computer used to obtain those copies - and that could be any computer! New network card? Practically fraud! And don't forget your new OEM microsoft software as you buy your shiny new computer! Good consumer!

Re:His bail was $19,964?

[jrallison]

Seems like this could be a case of dyslexia as the selling price of $1,195 would give us a nice round $20,000 bail. $1,159 -> $1,195 ?

Re:I'm confused

[tsm_sf]

A honest businessman would notify the person who is selling of a potential higher value of the equipment, given some service work, and offer a reasonable price.

Every now and then you run across a /. post so far removed from daily existance that you can't help but wonder who's behind it....

I WANT TO BELIEVE

Re:I'm confused

[dougmc]

Generally those types of "crash" sales aren't going to happen over the internet - which is where this laptop was sold according to TFA. You'd take it to an aquaintence, or a pawn shop or such, and you'd have no problem leaving a copy of your ID as bona fides that it's not hot.

If you say so. I buy all sorts of stuff cheap on the Internet, and I don't think it's stolen. And I don't usually take or give ID, though I might if something really didn't seem legitimate, though I'd be reluctant to have a complete stranger making a copy of my ID.

Just because smoke is pouring out of a house doesn't mean it's on fire - but a reasonable person would call the fire department anyway.

Bad analogy. In fact, that analogy is worse than most.

And a reasonable person would think this was a stolen laptop.

Nope. I find stuff listed on austin.forsale and the local craigslist that's sold for a small fraction of what it's worth on a regular basis. I generally don't think it's stolen, even though I know I could turn around and sell it on eBay for 3x what I bought it for. Sometimes I even buy it, much to my wife's dismay.

Of course, in these cases, I usually know their email address, often a phone number, where they live (since I picked it up) ... it's hardly anonymous.

About two years ago I picked up a 20/40 GB DLT drive at a garage sale for $10. Works fine. To buy one would cost hundreds of dollars, perhaps close to $1000, yet I have no reason to believe it to be stolen.

Now, if somebody were to come up to me on the street and say `psst, want to buy a laptop?' then I'd be very suspicious. The odds would be very good that it's stolen, or that it's a block of wood wrapped up in paper (preying on my greed.) I don't usually work that way.

But just because something is cheap, that does not mean it's stolen.

Re:wow...

[The MAZZTer]

Imagine you're the one who buys a $2000 laptop for $300. Now, you understand this person is selling the laptop for MUCH less than they can get for it. They obviously want to get rid of it quickly. Now list some of the reasons they would do this... oh wait, there's only one possible one... bad things happen if they're caught with it. Which means you shouldn't want anything to do with it, or you should report your suspicions to the authorities.

This is actually one of the few places where US law WORKS.

Some things that bother me about this...

[Hosiah]

(1) Just what was all that personal data *doing* in a laptop walking around in the first place? Shouldn't it be residing on a nice, solid server somewhere in a basement behind a couple of locked doors? Why, exactly, would you need to carry 98,000 people's worth of data around with you? Were they going out to print up birthday cards?

(2) Buy laptop for $300, sell for $1159 on Ebay. Hmmmm.. Sorry, those of you pointing the finger at the guy, I'm less inclined to believe he was intentionally committing a criminal act. Would one be so brazen as to openly sell it in so public a manner, particularly when this high-profile case was broadcast all over the internet? I think he was just stupid, not thieving. Besides, he could have made himself less suspicious by lying and saying he got it for...say...$850, low enough to still be a bargain, but not so low as to scream, "Hot goods!"

(3) What kind of idiot sells a stolen laptop for a measly 300 scoots? Even ghetto druggies of the most alley-bound (some of whom I've known...having lived in California) know to charge higher than that, no matter how desperate for a rock they are. And that makes me go...

(4) How do you let somebody who looks (and smells) like *that* much of a lowlife get on the property without calling security, let alone near your thousand-dollar, precious-data-encrusted laptop?

Re:That was definitely what saved your ass

[jafiwam]

People pick up stuff cheap all the time. For example;

- dumpster diving
- rummage sales/fleamarkets
- freecycle groups
- student moving day in a college town

I personally gave away a color laser printer because I had to move in 2 weeks and had a tractor trailer size pile of stuff that had accumulated over 20 years that couldn't go to the new office.

The printer worked, and when one messed with it enough it worked well for about 8 pages. The company wrote it off and bought TWO newer ones they were using a couple of years before.

Yet the thing sat there and became my job to dump.

I am sure it was worth well over $1k to someone who could get it working. But had neither the time nor the patience for it (and had two other working printers already, so why bother?).

So some guy from some computer shop got it for free because he could take it that day. I am sure he made a huge profit on it.

So don't be too quick to assume someone dumping cheap stuff must have "stolen" it. It could have been dumped for lots of other reasons at very low cost and be totally legit.

Re:wow...

[Legion303]

I was about to buy a friend's laptop for $300 until I opened my mouth and told him how much they were going for on eBay. Some people really don't have an idea of how much things are worth sometimes. On the other hand, it's not the police force's job to punish people; they arrested him on suspicion of receiving stolen property (or something similar)...it's the job of the court system to determine whether it was intentional and hand out punishment if needed.