Slashdot Mirror
How Not to Steal a Sidekick
timmit was one of many readers to point out the story of a stolen Sidekick, writing with this excerpt from the site: ""When my friend realized that she had left the Sidekick in the taxi she asked me to immediately send a message to the phone saying that we would give a reward for the phone. There was no response. After a day of waiting, she had to go to the store and spend over $300 on a new Sidekick. When she put her SIM card in, she saw that the person(s) that had taken the phone had not only signed on to AOL leaving their name and password in the phone, but they had taken pictures of themselves." I can sympathize, after someone with the address Rmluckyguy@aol.com tried to sell me back the Visor Deluxe stolen from my car last year in Philadelphia. I hope Evan has better luck.
Posting rmluckyguy@aol.com 's email to the front page of slashdot is one way to get revenge I suppose. My guess is that email address just became unusable.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
It's been running for a couple days (the whole thing started on the 6th), but I think slashdot finally took it over the edge. The pics are/were nothing special, a young latina (mexican american?) girl, a really big mexican guy. Sorry, no porn. There were some links to the girl, her boyfriend, and the fat guy's myspace pages, for those that get off on geocities-level craptacular page layouts.
The whole thing is a giant internet pissing contest. Initially it was funny, and I hope the guy gets his sidekick back, but at the same time there's a whole lot of internet lawyering going on there that's pretty childish. The back and forth between the owner and the people that have the sidekick has gone on for about a day too long. It was funny to see the theives act like idiots, it was funny to see the owner thump them. But now it's down to a guy arguing with idiots and getting beaten by experience. The guy needs to realize that nothing he says is going make these folks magically wake up and say "OMFG, I was so wrong. Here's your phone back, sorry for the trouble. Peace be with you."
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Yes, stealing someone's cell phone is very wrong. Obviously it needs to be returned to its rightful owner (ie. the person who bought it.) and it's strange that the thief hasn't just admitted it and taken the cell phone over to the owner.
However, it looks to me like the young girl in the pictures may be somewhat innocent. Let's call them Mr. Army and Ms. Booty, just to make it easier (any similarity in naming between real life and the monikers is purely accidental... no really.) Mr. Army says, ostensibly, that a cabbie sold it to him. I doubt that's true. They also say that Mr. Army gave it to Ms. Booty as a present. That's probably what happened. And she got a SIM card and took some pictures and logged onto her AOL and now this guy takes her and shows her to the world as if she's a monster. The person who deserves the world's ire is the thief, Mr. Army.
He really needs to own up to the situation. If he bought it from a cabbie, he had to know it was stolen. And if he stole it himself, well... the best thing he can do now is take the phone back and apologize. Anything else is just prolonging the inevitable, and possibly getting him a larger sentence, should Mr. Shamer choose to press charges.
I feel like Ms. Booty is at least somewhat innocent. As it stands now, it would appear that she knows the phone is stolen, but obviously she's young, and judging by the fact that she has a child, probably none too bright, and easily swayed by Mr. Army's persuasion. This is a black mark on her life that will follow her around for many years to come. I'm sure she will have to endure some harsh judgement from her peers at school, and I'm not absolutely certain she deserves that.
And now that Mr. Shamer has rejected offers for free webhosting 'gone over his current provider's bandwidth cap' and put up a donation link, it amounts to little more than a cry for cash.
I feel sorry for everyone involved.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. . . . . . . .
If you leave a phone in a taxi, can you really consider it 'stolen'?
If the person who finds it uses the service that they're not authorized to use, I would imagine that counts for something in the realm of stealing.
Say you find a wallet full of cash. I'm not sure of the legality of keeping it for yourself, and it's a jerky thing to do anyway , but it's definitely illegal to try to use the credit cards that you're not authorized to use. Using their phone service without permission is probably similar.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
I suppose this isn't technically stealing
Maybe not, but posession of stolen property is a felony. They know that it's stolen property. There's a police report filed regarding the stolen property. T-Mobile is apparently going to shut off the service, which means they're convinced it's stolen property.
If this guy really is an MP then he's putting his military career in jeopardy. This is the sort of thing that could get him booted out of the military, possibly after a trip to the brig, and undoubtedly with a dishonorable discharge.
If the army soldier WarriorPena84@aol.com did in fact write and send this, he is going to be attending the UCMJ School of Hard Knocks, and that is going to suck:
"listen you dumb mother fucker my sister bought that phone from some cab driver so what the fuck do you want . shes not going to return it if she bought it, and am military police so dont give me that bullshit about you going to the cops over a lost phone the nypd has better things to do then to worry about your friend losing her phone. you better stop harrasing my sister or you'll have to deal with me and you dont want that"
Shows a lack of impulse control, immaturity, and absence of sound judgement: given the mutlple recent international incidents our military has been involved in, I truly hope they take away his weapon privileges, and soon.
I am not a JAG, but, there are about a dozen things they can charge him with there, from 'conduct unbecoming', to making a threat, conspiracy, etc. Not good.
They should turn him over to the grammar and spelling Nazis too....
It seems like a new trend to get things like this "public" in order to get back to the offenders, using the open and more and more community-like nature of the internet.
I wouldn't be surpriced if in a while these you-are-a-criminal-bitch! webpages start popping up plentyful as people seem to feel they "can do something" and hunting the offenders down, having direct result as it exposes them in their own social network (blog/myspace/...) having a bigger impact (a "most in my direct environment and social network dissaproved" vs. "some stupid cop 'caught me'") or perhaps, for some, it's way to be able to mock someone. It's fascinating to see it resembling an old custom where criminals were publically humiliated and displayed on the townsquare for everyone to enjoy.
The guy with the laptop distressed me and I felt relief him getting exposed in his questionable activities. It really looked like the guy explicitely intended to sell some broken laptop and profit off of it. Judging from the pictures though, this girl seems to be rather young and lower class, just wanting to get in on the whole technology gadgets-train and saw an opportunity. I don't approve of it, and think she just should've given the sideKick back without going all racist and intimidating over it. But it seems less of a threat. Although, it appeared she felt "untouchable" by the way she communicated back. I suppose being critisized by a wold-audience personally adressed to you will do more then a criminal record which means in certain circles how "tough" and "gansta" you are.
I do wonder what the long term damage will be as many companies track your name on the internet before hiring...
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
If that gadget were her only phone number (which is increasingly the case with people it seems), I can definitely understand.
I doubt it. It's not the kind of con that a 16 year old (or even most 60 year olds) could pull off. If the girl was an unwilling participant without her knowlege, e.g. someone else is using her to setup a con, she and everyone else associated with this would have been incredulous from day/hour 1.
The details are too perfect. Like the conflicting stories, multiple myspace accounts some of which have been deactivated. Unless a person cons for a living they wouldn't think of human nature stuff like that. Some of the T-Mobile stuff jibes, too. Too many good details.
It seems easy to do now that it's been done, but it wouldn't have been easy to setup and coordinate as spontaneously as it has happened.
Besides, I don't doubt he's out of bandwidth what with the combined Digg/Slashdot effect, that kind of stuff can get expensive real quick, and he probably underestimated how expensive.
cat sig >
Why doesn't the vendor have some authentication and location system for phones that are reported stolen? It's not like T-Mobile doesn't know exactly where the device is located.
Oh wait...this way they get to sell another phone. Question answered.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Kind of like a woman is dumb enough to dress in a short skirt and be out at night and she is raped she got what she deserved?
Sorry but have a phone fall out of your purse or your pocket is an accident. Keeping one that you know isn't yours is theft.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I looked up the site on internic and it appears this person is real and lives in Connecticut. I figure not everyone knows how to look things up on Internic (even on slashdot), so I'm deleting personally identifying information.
evanwashere.com:
Evan [last name removed]
68 [Street removed] Hill Rd
[city removed], CT [zip removed]
+1.917[number removed]
[email removed]
I wondered also if this was legitimate but it seems like a lot of effort and risk to take for a few donations. I currently believe it's legitimate - the Internic info has the ring of truth..
I've worked for a police department for 4.5 years as a Community Service Officer. And soon will be working as a Police Officer in the LA area. A fleeing thief is an emergency, moron. He committed two felonies. How dare you tell people not to call 911 in such a case? You are SUPPOSED to call (that is, it is your civic duty) 911 if you see ANY crime being committed. Not only did this guy steal my phone, but he also tried to run me over with his car. You idiot. Would you really just let this guy get away because you got your phone back? I got someone off the street who'd probably been stealing from people for a while. Just a reminder people, 911 is there for you to call when crimes are being committed, no matter how petty you may think they are. P.S. Calling police on someone who takes your stuff is not "Revenge." You are a moron who could get a lot of people hurt by making them think, "Oh- he's just pounding on the door, it's not really a crime, oh, he just knocked down the door, it's not a crime, oh he's just threatening to kill me, police probably have something better to do...". Can someone please help me on this one? I'm having a hard time believing this guy would post something so ill-thought out.