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."
Did he sell the laptop to someone else, or was the school just buying every laptop on Ebay that fit the description?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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.
The CNN article seems to be missing many of the facts presented in the summary. Here's a better article, though I still find no mention of the fellow "being assured" that the laptop was legit.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.Bradley Holt
Nice to see that, although his instinct is sharp as a tack, he stayed true to his business goals.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
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.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
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!
Test your net with Netalyzr
"Bail is set, to, I don't know, $27,648.33. I'm a judge and I can do what I want."
blarg.
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.
Man, hard to find a good link to a legal concept. This one should do: http://www.duhaime.org/Tort/ca-negl.aspx.
I am not left-handed, either!
"Receiving stolen property" is a federal crime in the US. If he knew the laptop was stolen, bought it, and kept it, he's guilty. 50 years.
ugh.
IANAL, but, I'm right: A federal crime is a crime that involves a violation of federal law. Federal laws are those which (in theory) the congress is authorized to make under the constituttion. Most of the rational for these has to do with "interstate commerce".
Receiving stolen property, like, murder, rape, arson, kidnapping, and you-name-it, is ALWAYS going to be a state law. There are no federal laws against murder. There are no federal laws against kidnapping. There are federal laws against interstate transportation of a minor with unlawful intent (interstate kidnapping).
There are no federal laws against receiving stolen property. There are federal laws against interstate transportation of stolen goods (which doesn't seem to have happened in this case).
If you aren't American, then fine, but if you are American, why didn't you learn this in school?
I think the real question here is, did he receive positive or negative feedback once the transaction was complete?
He then resold the laptop on eBay for $1,159 - just $18,805 short of his bail after police arrested him.
What kind of judge sets a bail at $19,964? Is this the Walmart Court? *pictures what the Walmart Court would be*
"Always Low Bails." "We're Rolling Back (tm) your execution date!"
Yes, because you don't know a priori what happened—whether it's a new OS or if a few files were removed or what. Once you boot the HD, you stomp on files and write over possibly valuable erased files. Forensic tests require looking at the drive read-only and also recovering previoulsy-erased files (which are often a gold mine)
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.
Try 18 USC 1111 (murder, punishable by death or by imprisonment for life) and 18 USC 1201 (kidnapping, punishable by imprisonment for any number of years or for life, or by death if someone dies). These are federal laws.
(Still, you are kind of right; these laws only apply within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, but your statement that there are no federal laws against murder or kidnapping are a little misleading.)
I've quoted some California law below. As with many sections of law, there is a "reasonable man" standard. In other words, "She said it wasn't stolen" doesn't wash in court if the prosecutor can show that a "reasonable man" would find the transaction suspicious. In this case that may be pretty easy since Alburati said, "She seemed suspicious, because she sold me an expensive laptop for such a low price..."
It's likely that he reformatted the computer for sale on eBay. If, while working on it, he noticed anything that would further lead him to believe that the laptop was actually stolen (UC Berkeley property tag, data that would lead him to believe the laptop actually belonged to UC, etc.) and he continues to conceal the computer from its rightful owner then that also makes him guilty.
Additionally, this guy had an active business of buying and selling used laptops and phones. While you don't generally need licenses for the occasional garage sale, you usually do for an ongoing business operation even if most of it is handled on eBay and Craigslist. If he is not in compliance with the appropriate zoning, business license, sales-tax, income-tax and other laws then moving stolen goods may just be the beginning of his fun.
Here's the law:
496. (a) Every person who buys or receives any property that has been stolen or that has been obtained in any manner constituting theft or extortion, knowing the property to be so stolen or obtained, or who conceals, sells, withholds, or aids in concealing, selling, or withholding any property from the owner, knowing the property to be so stolen or obtained, shall be punished by imprisonment in a state prison, or in a county jail for not more than one year. However, if the district attorney or the grand jury determines that this action would be in the interests of justice, the district attorney or the grand jury, as the case may be, may, if the value of the property does not exceed four hundred dollars ($400), specify in the accusatory pleading that the offense shall be a misdemeanor, punishable only by imprisonment in a county jail not xceeding one year.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
UANAL, and... you're wrong. There ARE federal laws against stolen property including the receipt of it (18 USC sections 2311 to 2322) as well as kidnapping (18 USC sections 1201-1204), and murder and other homicides (18 USC sections 1111 to 1122.) While it is one distinction, state/federal jurisdiction is not reserved only for the crossing of state or federal lines. But in this case, a California guy sold it to someone in South Carolina; it crossed state lines, it's federal.
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!
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
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.
(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?
Not surprisingly, nobody asks why such personal data on a mobile computer was not encrypted.
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.
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.