Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
bs, pawn shops are full of great deals on lenses (and bikes, and DVDs/CDs) because of all the crooks that steal them and the pawn shop owners looking the other way.
You don't really think that a pawn shop owner sees a, say, Canon 300 f2.8L and can't figure out that it's worth a lot of money? Plausible deniability lets a lot of people get out of things even if they are dirty as sin.
I mean, with the (low) amount of money a pawnshop gives you on stuff, what honest person would sell their stuff through them vs selling on classifieds or at a garage sale or even at a specialist camera shop who a) would give you more money upfront and b) would give you even more if you give it to them for consignment.
Especially these days with google and everything where it takes 10 seconds to figure out the real value of an item there is no excuse (save theft or scams) from anything being offered at a fraction of its retail value.
And to all the people who say "it's not my duty to ascertain if it's stolen or not, if it's a good deal I'll buy it": you shall reap what you are sowing.
-- the cake is a lie
omg i bot this dell for 300 dollers cud i go to jail!!!!!1111111
omfg im not joking dude i dun wanna go to jail!!!11111111111
It's been a long time.
It's easy to find the price on them, they are very commonly sold, both new and used, and it's exceedingly rare to find an extremely good deal on one. This really should raise red flags.
As others have noted, it's the "reasonable person" standard. If a reasonable person would suspect the transaction was illegal, then you can be held liable. I think you'd find most reasonable people would find this highly suspicious.
I mean if I find a $2000 laptop for $1800 I think it's a good deal. For $1500 I start to wonder, for $1000 I would almost certianly think it's a scam. For $300? Forget it, I won't even touch that. Something is wrong, nobody undersells technology that much.
While we shouldn't have to be paranoid of checking every transaction, we should excersize common sense. As the saying goes if it sounds too good to be true it IS too good to be true.