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Best Way To Get Back a Stolen Computer?
davidphogan74 writes "I have some stolen computers checking in with a server we have (software pre-loaded), and I have full access to the systems. What's the best way to deal with this situation? The local police (to the theft) have been contacted several times and seem to be clueless. I personally have no financial interest in these computers, I just don't like atom-thieves. What's the best way to handle knowing the IPs, email addresses, MySpace sites, the Google login, etc. when working with law enforcement? The officer I spoke with (who genuinely seemed to care) didn't know an IP address from a mailing address, so I called others. Nobody cared. Anyone have any ideas?"
The ISP can tell you who is at an IP address, and from that, you can find your computers.
Then call the FBI, they do have some experience in this sort of thing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
confidential data such as that can only be obtained with a court order ... unless you're sneaky and can somehow convince tech support or a CSR to give you the information.
If you have full access t to the system, start logging EVERYTHING. I'm sure eventually you'll find someone going to a myspace, facebook or checking email.
Write down the IP address, find the ISP and call them and ask them to log that you called with the date and time, and the IP address. I wouldn't expect you to tell you who it is, but have them log the user at that time so you can reference it later.
My brother's desktop computer was stolen in NYC. He started showing up on Instant Messenger, and some young kids were using the computer and accepted a video chat request! From there I had their IP address. The detective handling the case had no idea what I was talking about, but it turns out NYC (and maybe your municipality) has a computer crimes squad. My brother contacted them directly with the IP address I retrieved, and they were able to recover the computer pretty quickly! So try and find if there is a department that handles electronic fraud, computer crimes, that sort of thing.
And we handle this regularly. The department local to where the thefts occurred should have been notified in the first place and a police report filed. If you've done that, there will be an officer associated with that report. Get in touch with him/her directly with the information you have. If you can't, find out who the detectives are for that PD and get in touch with them. If you can gather any and all information you've got regarding IP addresses, etc., put it all together before getting in touch.
/. stories regarding people in your situation tracking down stolen computers. You might try searching for those or Google articles and blogs about the steps folks have taken when facing lackluster police response.
Unfortunately, if they're not remotely tech savvy and/or simply afraid of technology, it may take some prodding. Most state police agencies have teams specifically tasked with this sort of thing, so it may be that you have to contact your state's police for help.
When you bring any documentation, also make sure you have estimated costs of all the hardware. That will sometimes help get people's attention, being able to say it's X number of dollars. Not saying it's right, but much of the time you run into departments who won't pay much attention to "petty" thefts, but will take notice of $2000 or more. There have been a number of
As with any civil case, the police are not going to be a driving force to pursue a theft
FYI Theft is criminal, not civil, how serious depends on the dollar amount. Most thefts under $1000 are misdemeanors, over that is felony theft and these crimes are certainly under the pervue of your local and state police (unless its interstate, in which cases the FBI has jurisdiction).
The Admin and the Engineer
What you need to do here is to contact a specialist computer crimes department. This will not be a new situation to them and they will recognize the fact that there is a very high probability of an arrest and recovery of the stolen goods.
The first thing to do would be to find out if the computers were officially reported stolen. If so you need to report the development to the police force where the theft was reported. Otherwise make out a report.
Once a report is made it counts on their local statistics and the police have to take it seriously - we are talking about several thousand dollars here.
There may not be a computer crimes dept on your local force but they should certainly have access to those resources. Find out which force is responsible for investigating kiddie porn - those guys would usually pretty much prefer to be doing anything else for a change, after a short while its like shooting fish in a barrel.
You can certainly help by collecting as much information as possible. For example, log the IP addresses that the machines are using. Then use reverse DNS lookup to find the ISP.
If you still can't get anywhere, contact me at hallam@dotfuturemanifesto.com and I can pass the issue on to folk I know. They may not be able to help you direct but they will know someone who can.
The reason that so much time and effort is poured into investigating kiddie porn rather than bank fraud is not simply the nature of the crime. Its the fact that they have a defined process that delivers highly predictable results. If we could design a process for delivering collars in phishing fraud we would have no difficulty making it a higher police priority.
It seems to me that this is an area where we can easily set up a predictable recovery process that delivers collars.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
That's not bricking. That's nowhere near bricking.
Many ppl mistakenly assume the FBI deals with computer fraud, electronic credit card theft, etc. It is actually under the Secret Service who have VERY good people working for them. //have had to call them
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
FYI Theft is criminal, not civil, how serious depends on the dollar amount. Most thefts under $1000 are misdemeanors, over that is felony theft and these crimes are certainly under the pervue of your local and state police (unless its interstate, in which cases the FBI has jurisdiction).
Many crimes also constitute individual civil torts. If someone comes onto your land and steals your irrigation system, that's larceny or burglary, but it's also conversion, and you can be sued for it. If you know who took it and have supporting evidence you can just a file a lawsuit against the person.
Good suggestions.
Here's something simple I did for a client before two of their computers got stolen:
I wrote my company name and phone number on their computers(in pencil.) And I assigned them a name, in this case it was something like, "J.C.C.11" and "J.C.C.12." When they got robbed, they thought all was lost. Then they got a call from a nearby police department, asking if they had computers stolen. They asked them to come and pick them up. They called me to go with them to ID anything else that I might recognize as being theirs. If someone steals once, they'll probably steal twice.
I was able to retrieve a stolen computer using the MAC address once it was activated on another ISP. Book' em Dano
Wire fraud. Swift. Enjoy the jail time. Banks do have the power (and, the requisite number of losses) to have a $2k theft with wire fraud/identity theft prosecuted.
Sorry to piggyback on you Squiddy. Perhaps some kind soul will mod this relevant comment up.
SO1-06113169-C
If anyone at Sony can match a NIC signature to this please post. Sooner or later the idiots are going to plug it in.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7489064.stm
Why anyone would wish to pursue this before or instead of a (free or state funded) criminal prosecution I have no idea.
Because there are different remedies and a different burden of proof. In a state-funded criminal prosecution their main goal is to convict and punish the perpetrator, and they must prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. You might get your property back, after it's languished in the evidence locker for a year or two. If the property was destroyed or lost, however, the state's not going to reimburse you. In a civil case you can either get the property back or damages, whether or not the property still exists or not, and you only have to prove your case with a preponderance of the evidence.
Anyway it's not an either/or proposition, you are allowed to sue in civil court at the same time the defendant is being prosecuted in criminal court.
My state even created civil actions for the victims of a wide variety of crimes.
Good luck getting the FBI interested unless large values (well over $10,000) is involved. However, you might have good luck contacting the relevant state's State Bureau of Investigation (the state equivalent of the FBI). They almost definitely would have a cyber-crime department which would have the knowledge to locate the computer with the info you have.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Give 'em to meeee!
Uhm, there has been a crime committed you don't need to be sneaky. Arguably the crime was a felony, Grand Theft. Figure out which ISP hosts that IP, goto the cops and tell them to get a warrant to require the ISP to give up their data on the IP. Then have them serve a warrant on that home. Then they go get your PC and throw the thieves in jail.
-- QED
People always assume bringing a lawsuit against someone will be beneficial. Again, it costs significant money with zero guarantee of any reimbursment for court costs and lawyers fees, let alone recovering stolen property.
If the property is valuable enough, a lawyer is probably worth the price. If it isn't, you can always just bring suit yourself in small claims court or (depending on how your state court system is set up) county court (which in my state handles cases worth more than small claims court but less than $15,000). Small claims court and county courts don't always use formal evidentiary and procedural rules, and the judges are used to guiding parties through the lawsuit.
Flipping a coin is as good an indicator as anything of whether you'll win in court under any circumstances, no matter how strong you think your case is.
If you have the evidence on your side, and the defendant doesn't really have much of a defense, you're probably going to win. Chance doesn't have too much to do with it.
Accepting stolen property is only a crime if you know its stolen.
Nope. Possessing stolen property is a crime regardless of if you know it's stolen or not. Sounds ridiculous but its true. The sane part of this whole deal is that you wont be probably wont be prosecuted as long as you cooperate. There is no guarantee of this although its your best chance.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Or even better, you can set up a cron job to ping a url that you monitor, that is unique and nobody but your computer would be pinging.
That way every time they plug in the network, it'll immediately shout out to you "I'm here and my IP is"
I had to deal with this myself once (tracked down a stolen laptop). The local ordinance is called "receipt of stolen property" and is a crime, but it requires knowledge that that the property is stolen or a preponderance of evidence that the individual should have reasonably known that the property was stolen.
But being in possession of stolen property is enough to give an officer probable cause and you'll probably be charged with something.