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

How did they catch him?

[autopr0n]

Did he sell the laptop to someone else, or was the school just buying every laptop on Ebay that fit the description?

I'm confused

[captaincucumber]

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?

---------
theTshirtClub.com - you've got problems, we've got t-shirts.

Re:I'm confused

[Lally Singh]

I'm not trying to take sides in this, but a lot of businesses that do that, take in a fraction of its worth, do it because they're not sure they can sell it.

Buy 3 laptops @ 300, sell 1 @ 1000, try and recycle the parts on the other two for $10. Profit: $110. Not terribly great. And lots of used electronics businesses go under for exactly that reason.

Pawn shops have lots of useless inventory. Stuff they'll often have to trash. There's value in a guaranteed sale. Ever look at how much a car dealer offers you for a car, compared to what you can get if you sell it yourself? The dealer's offering less because he's also offering the service of a zero-hassle sale.

My point is that risk is a major factor in price. A $300 laptop is only worth $1200 if you can sell it. Did this guy even know it was working? A laptop with a flaky LCD is suddenly worth a lot less.

Was it ever revealed HOW...

[screevo]

... it was stolen? Did someone leave it laying around?

Possession of Stolen Property

[Stargoat]

Can a person be convicted of solely possessing stolen property, when it was purchased in good faith from the thief? It violates the idea of intent to commit a crime, namely that there must be intent and knowledge for an action to be morally wrong. It means that no matter what you purchase, if it ever happened to have been stolen, you could be held liable. I'll be contacting my local congressmen if this is the case.

Re:Possession of Stolen Property

[LoRdTAW]

Yea but some people dont know what they are selling or dont care, they just want some money for fancy computer thingy. A while back on eBay I found a 3 com 8 port gigabit switch. It was an older model and used it still ran for over a grand. Well it was said to be broken they just plugged it in said the lights didnt light properly and sold it to me for 20 bucks. I plugged it in and used the console cable and what do you know it booted and passed all tests. The admin password was even cleard to default. I then bought 2 gigabit nics to test it and everything worked just like it should. The port lights are screwed up but have no effect on any function. I now have an 8 port layer 3 fully managed gigabit routing switch for 20 bucks.

So yea people are either ignorant of an items value or improperly diagnose its condition. My friend bought an $1100 laptop off ebay for 600. The auction looked legit and they guy had good feedback.

The Chron's article, and a fence on ebay.

[nweaver]

San Francisco Chronicle

However, said Froshling is SCUM. To buy a $2000+ laptop ($2500, but how old?) (X40 IBM) laptop for $300? He KNEW it was stolen. He's being nothing more than a fence with an EBay account. And he'll get off with just a misdemenor. SCUM!

Re:Better Article

[The Angry Mick]

Here's the article where he claims:

"The whole transaction only took about one minute," Alburati said in a statement to police. "She seemed suspicious, because she sold me an expensive laptop for such a low price. If the laptop was stolen, I did not know about it. I just took her word for it."

Been there, done that...

[Afecks]

I got arrested for buying a stolen Army laptop, except I didn't get a good deal. I paid basically full price but it was still new in the box. I think that was the only thing that saved my ass. This guy may be in a little trouble for "receiving stolen property". RSP is pretty hard to prove but usually the biggest factor is getting too good of a deal on something. If you have reason to suspect something is stolen, you are guilty of aiding the thief.

This guy bought a ridiculously cheap laptop and then sold it in a public auction. This guy is doubly stupid. I have no pity for him.

Bad math? or unusual bail?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that $19,964 is an odd ammount of money to charge for bail...

yes, personal information *was* stolen

[Anonymous Coward]

i personally know at least one person who was affected by this; she was a UCB student at the right time, and someone opened an Equifax account using credentials that were correct at the time she attended UCB.

Encryption

[Randseed]

Not surprisingly, nobody asks why such personal data on a mobile computer was not encrypted.

Re:His bail was $19,964?

[NimNar]

this and the fact that nowhere in any article is bail even mentioned. So the slashdot editors just put out crap without any fact checking. Cheers slashdot