Stolen Laptop Calls In! - Will Police Act?

broswell asks: "We rent computer equipment and occasionally our equipment gets stolen. I wrote a little VBS script that calls our webserver every hour (script below) and installed it on our laptops. Sure enough, some laptops went missing. One of the stolen laptops is now calling in from a Verizon Internet account which appears to be in a neighboring town. The Baltimore City Police grudgingly filled out a police report 'so we could collect insurance' but don't seem willing to subpoena Verizon, find the address of the end user, recover tha laptop and prosecute the thief. They seem clueless. The Maryland State police has a computer crimes unit. The have a clue, but they claim they don't have jurisdiction. It is not about the money (our customer signed for the computers and will pay for the stolen items), we just want justice." With all of the necessary information in hand of the proper authorities, how likely is it that the stolen laptop will be recovered?

For those interested, here is the script the laptop used to report itself back to its owners:

Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set objScriptExec = objShell.Exec("ipconfig /all")
strIpConfig = objScriptExec.StdOut.ReadAll
myvar = "send=" + strIpConfig

do until 0=1
on error resume next
a=HTTPPost("http://www.yourtrackinghost.com/cgi-bin/locator.pl",myvar)
WScript.Sleep 3600000

LOOP

Function HTTPPost(sUrl, sRequest)
set oHTTP = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
oHTTP.open "POST", sUrl,false
oHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
oHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Length", Len(sRequest)
oHTTP.send sRequest

HTTPPost = oHTTP.responseText
End Function

Comments

Depends on the Police Department

[rolfwind]

For instance, in this case:
http://www.laptopical.com/lojack-for-laptop.html

"Proof-positive of LoJack's power comes from such stories as the one out of William Penn University in Iowa. A student there had a college laptop stolen. Absolute Software was promptly notified. And their recovery experts there soon tracked the laptop down to the phone line that the notebook was hooked into the Internet on. The Des Moines Police Department was notified, and officers promptly put down their donuts and coffee and swooped in on the missing PC."

The lojack program seems to do the exact thing yours does, but then again, perhaps because it is "official", the police may take the information more seriously.

Re:Media

[Harmonious Botch]

Good idea, but wrong order. Give Verizon a chance to be the good guy. Call their publicity department first. If they make excuses, then call local media.

Make Some Noise.

[themassiah]

First, try and verify that the police department isn't doing anything about it. Talk to a supervisor in a day or two and see where this case is going. Then, if nothing is being done, consult an attorney and ask what your options are. I know that most police forms have complain forms to fill out if you want to start making a stink. Work your way up the ladder, their IS a chain of accountability and if you're persistant and cause enough pain, someone will make the phone call to Verizon or whomever and get the name and address on the account.

If that fails to produce justice, follow up with the attorney and file civil suit against the police agency. You handed them about 3/4 of the case when you produced an IP address, they should have been willing and capable of filling in the missing paperwork and whatnot.

Nothing new

[dusanv]

I had my car stolen when I was in school. 12 year old Honda Accord. Didn't think anyone would bother to steal the POS so I didn't insure against theft (money saving student). After it got stolen I called the cops and the first thing they asked me was whether the car was insured against theft. Since it wasn't, they wouldn't even take a report! Can you believe that? Anyway, I found the car a couple of days later 5 parking spots away from where I left it. The steering column was busted. There was a pair of size 9 rollerblades in the trunk (thief with size 9 feet?) and six jugs of bleach (???).

This was in local papers: a woman here in town (Ottawa, ON) had her house repeatedly broken into. After reporting to the cops and complaining that she has to buy a new lock each time they told her to leave the door unlocked!

Then file a writ of replevin

[Savantissimo]

Your linked-to post is quite right, and worth a repost. IANAL but used to just about everything but appear in court working in a small law office in Maryland about 15 years ago. I believe specifically what this guy needs after getting a subpoena for the John Doe's ID is a "writ of replevin" in which the court may order the Sheriff to seize the property after an ex-parte pre-trial show-cause hearing.
See:
http://www.courts.state.md.us/district/forms/civil /dccv04br.html - for specific MD instructions and http://www.courts.state.md.us/district/forms/civil /dccv04.pdf - the form.

If you are not in MD you may make a federal case out of it; the U.S. Marshals serve these writs, too. You might find that has drawbacks - you really need a lawyer's advice, not Slashdot's.

>>anagama (611277) Sunday August 20, @01:07AM (#15943034) wrote:
If the cops won't help, see the tort of conversion [wikipedia.org]. File a "john doe" civil suit. Once filed, your attorney would have subpoena power -- use it with Verizon to get the name, address, and phone number of the user associated with the IP. Verizon will have an entire department devoted to processing these types of requests -- you'll have no problem except figuring out what their number is. If you represent yourself, you may have to ask the court to issue the subpoena on your behalf. Once you have the identifier, amend your suit to name that party (probably keep the "john does" at least till you're certain you have all the people involved). Also check your states statutes, there may be something specifically related to your situation. The statutes are certainly available online free -- start at your state's homepage (somewhere burried of course).