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Repairman Steals Hard Drive And Charges To Reinstall It

Posted by samzenpus on from the new-geek-squad-terms-of-service dept.

Phase 1: Break into a realty office, and steal a computer hard drive.

Phase 2: Ask if they will pay you $50 to fix the computer.

Phase 3: Get charged with theft and receiving stolen property!

7 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Summary error... by SCPRedMage · · Score: 5, Informative

    He charged $50 an hour. For 40 hours of "work".

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    1. Re:Summary error... by cyberchondriac · · Score: 2, Informative

      seems like a lot of work for 50 bucks I've taken machines from boxes-o'-shrinkwrapped-parts to running XP in under an hour or actual work (I wouldn't count the two "click once then go away for half an hour" steps as billable work unless they failed for some reason on the first try and I needed to babysit it). I'd feel bad about trying to charge a full hour for just that part... And as for the file recovery, you generally have two situations - Either the old HDD works just fine (except for a broken Windows install) and you just need to copy it over to the new one, or no one has any shot of recovering it. So another hour, tops.

      Err... did you read the article? I think the parent poster was referring to the work of breaking into the realty office and removing the hard drive in the first place.
      The thief didn't have to recover any data, all he needed to do was simply reinstall the hard drive he stole, but going to the trouble of breaking in and stealing it would be a lot of hassle for just $50. (of course, that was not the case - he charged $2000)

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  2. Re:Charges filed... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Here's what I'm curious about: how did he get charged with theft and receiving stolen property?

    Was it just that he had possession of the stolen property, so they knew that one would stick, so it was a lesser included offense, just in case they couldn't prove the theft?

    He stole a camera too...

  3. Re:Charges filed... by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I don't think there's a "Conspiracy to thieve" charge, so they went for the next best.

    That's why it's simply "Criminal Conspiracy". That way it can be paired with any crime.

    Perhaps they just can't prove whether he had conspirators or worked alone.

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  4. Re:I Wonder How That Conversation Went by Romancer · · Score: 2, Informative

    Quotes from this guys profile on skillwho.com:

    "i am here to help with all computer related needs, anything that needs done can be done."

    I guess anything really means anything.

    http://www.skillwho.com/users/computers/pa/bethlehem/kevin-lutes/43e1a4e7-eea7-4516-bbbf-61ee2bd5e9e6//

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  5. Re:I Wonder How That Conversation Went by A.+B3ttik · · Score: 3, Informative

    A girl in my dormitory dropped her computer and destroyed her hard drive. Being the CS guru that I am, I assured her I could fix it... sans harddrive. She had already sent the Harddrive back to the manufacturer. There was now a gaping hole in the bottom of her laptop where her harddrive used to be. I told her I could STILL get it to work.

    "But there's no harddrive!"
    "Don't worry, I can fix it."

    So I take her USB drive, load DAMN SMALL LINUX on it, plug it into her computer, and voila! You should have seen the look on her face when I booted up Mozilla and had Facebook running on a computer without a harddrive.
    The media likes to portray us geeks as sorcerers, and sometimes, you can see why.

    She's back on the internet, she's got webmail, she's got facebook, she's got text editors, she's got practically everything she needs for school. (Naturally, I ask her if she's doing anything later, and of course she's 'busy.' Oh well.)

  6. Re:Article comments are good too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Yes... my mouse is connected to my monitor.

    Hello, USB.