Thief Posts His Photo To Facebook Victim's Account

An anonymous reader writes "Washington Post reporter Marc Fisher discovered his house had been burgled; money, a winter coat, an iPod and his son's laptop were stolen. Imagine his surprise when Facebook friends of his 15-year-old son reported that a photo of the apparent thief, wearing Fisher's coat and holding a wad of notes, had been uploaded to his son's Facebook account. How addicted do you have to be to a social network to post a status update and upload your photo *while* you're burgling someone's house?"

Comments

Just more extreme

[Toe, The]

There was a /. story a few months ago about a burglar who got busted because he used the victim's PC to check his FB status. But it is a new level of stupidity (arrogance? weirdness?) to go ahead and post a pic of yourself.

What's next, posting to the victim's wall before you break in? Maybe to the police's wall too?

Re:Just more extreme

[quatin]

People who think this is stupid need to get real. This guy won't get caught. The cops aren't out on main street screening for his face. Unless he leaves his full name, birthday and SSN, the police aren't going to act on anything else. Burglary is just so low on the pecking order that they're basically ignored. Even the detectives "assigned" to this case probably have 5-6 other cases to work on.

Re:Just more extreme

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, yeah, sure. The UK is just a complete cesspit, and have you seen those darkies who've moved in next door? I don't like 'em, but it's better than them Irish. Shifty lot them Micks. Should have hung the lot of 'em after Birmingham. Just think what it'll do to the house prices if the street is full of Pakis! Someone should complain to the Daily Mail.

Re:Just more extreme

[sentientbeing]

At BurglarCon2010, there was a Q&A panel of professional burglars to amend the RFC and petition its guild members to at least make sure the house is empty beforehand by checking FB accounts and status updates.

Re:Just more extreme

[Johnny5000]

Burglary is just so low on the pecking order that they're basically ignored. Even the detectives "assigned" to this case probably have 5-6 other cases to work on.

Usually this is the case. There's generally not a whole lot of leads in a burglary case, so a detective might not put a lot of effort into trying to solve a hopeless case.

However, a burglar doing something this stupid, leaving behind such a damning piece of evidence, that's the kind of case a detective would probably want to put a little effort into solving.

Re:Just more extreme

[Unequivocal]

Yeah - great point. Thief was much smarter to post this photo on the victim's facebook page than on his own!

Re:Just more extreme

[croddy]

Leads, yeah, sure. I'll just check with the boys down at the crime lab, they've got four more detectives working on the case. They got us working in shifts! Leads...

Re:Just more extreme

[TaoPhoenix]

Wouldn't this be an assignment for Anonymous?

Re:Just more extreme

[sodul]

My brother got several thousand euros worth of specialized equipment stolen from his work vehicle. The thief posted the equipment for sale online much lower than the going value. We found his name and address and told the cops. They know him as a drug addict who sells stolen goods ... nothing. The police told my brother that the best he could do was to show up at a meeting with the burglar (remember a hardcore drug addict), confront him and then call 911 (or local equivalent) after confirming the serial numbers match. French police.

Re:Just more extreme

[TaggartAleslayer]

It's obvious he's posing. This is not a "caught in action" shot. Nor is it likely that someone set up a routine to capture a burglar and upload the picture to their son's facebook.

Your theory has a few holes.

The likely explanation is greed, avarice, idiocy, and theft roll in together and stupidity comes along for the ride.

Re:Just more extreme

[Mister Whirly]

Knee-jerk reactions leading to hanging people for simple theft would be an indicator, to me, that society has truly gone to hell.

They also use to think the world was flat, and there were dragons past the edges. Sometimes changing the way a society thinks over time is not a bad thing.

Re:Just more extreme

[Hognoxious]

Have you been marooned on a desert island or something?

The UK officially switched over to the short scale in 1974, the US was already on it, and everyone else can just fuck off.

Re:Just more extreme

[Yvan256]

It sure would, but nobody knows where to find them.

Re:Just more extreme

[shadowrat]

Brilliant! Now they just have to find the guy who took the laptop, get the laptop back, and dust it for prints!

Re:Just more extreme

[Score Whore]

Contrary to the summary and the article at retardsecurity, the picture wasn't taken at the home of the victim. The dude is a total moron. Facebook is already involved:

Facebook is now awaiting a subpoena from D.C. police, after which the company will hand over information about when and where the burglar used my son's computer.

So they've got his IP address. They'll get the home address from the ISP. With the slightest effort this thing would be wrapped up in a day or two.

And he's plainly posing.

Re:Just more extreme

[DrgnDancer]

Actually they never really thought that. It's kind of an urban legend created by elementary and high school textbooks, but in general your point still stands (We can substitute, "They used to think the Earth was the center of the Universe"). Columbus was actually sailing on an invalid assumption and his detractors were right. Both knew the world was round, but Columbus thought it was considerably smaller than it actually was. He expected to reach Asia in relatively short order. How else would a reasonably skill navigator think he'd gotten to India after such a short trip? He knew knew roughly how far he'd gone; but he had no idea how far he still needed to go.

Re:Just more extreme

[splatter]

To the cloud!

Re:Just more extreme

[History's Coming To]

...and for those without the cultural references, the above is a good parody of the right-wing AND prejudicial wing of the UK press. Nowt wrong with being right wing, or with recognising racial/cultural differences (I do it by making sure I don't hand money to a Muslim and/or Arab with my left hand, it's no big deal and only polite), but the references the parent is making are real, stupid and sad. Somebody mod him/her up?

Re:Just more extreme

[pthisis]

Wrong. It's not usually done at night, its done during the day when people ARE NOT HOME. Theifs want to take your crap, they don't want a confrontation.

I'm pretty sure that when GP said "its also usual done at night (must be done at night to meet some definitions of burglary)" he was discussing burglary as legally defined. By common law, burglary is defined by 5 elements: (1) Breaking and (2) Entering (3) of a residence (4) at night (5) with intent to commit a felony.

Some jurisdictions have relaxed that definition, but traditionally if it's not at night then it isn't burglary; it could be larceny or robbery or simple theft or some other crime. The penalties for burglary were higher (as GP noted), precisely because it involved entering a residence at night which is both more invasive to people's sense of security and more likely to result in personal harm than daytime theft.

Even in jurisdictions where the definition has been relaxed, there are still often higher penalties for burglaries that are of residences, committed at night, or both.

Re:Just more extreme

[LoztInSpace]

Could be difficult. It was a wireless laptop running on a battery. Police have no leads.
Thanks. I'm here all week.

Street Cred +10

[aeroseth]

It's not all about the bling yo!

Re:Even the SCUM are implementing technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why someone should find him, beat him within an inch of his life and post a picture of themselves hoisting his barely-breathing body into a dumpster.

Re:Guess we'll see if Darwin was right

[YrWrstNtmr]

If this guy manages to successfully breed then Darwin might have been wrong but I think it also would weigh against "intelligent design".

This fool will outbreed you. And make you pay for it.

Re:Guess we'll see if Darwin was right

[XxtraLarGe]

This fool will outbreed you. And make you pay for it.

And that, my friends, is the welfare state in a nutshell.

No backup? WTH?

[scottv67]

From the fine article:

The good news, of course, is that no one was hurt, and virtually everything the burglar took is replaceable. One exception: On my son's computer, but never backed up, was one of the greatest documents ever, something he would have cherished all his life. He had meticulously kept a running list of every movie he had ever seen, hundreds and hundreds, with his comments on each. It's gone -- a reminder of the new reality that computers and Facebook have created, a world in which a document meant to last a lifetime can disappear in an instant, and a photograph meant as an impulsive gloat lives forever.

How is it that someone has a laptop where important files (files other than the OS and apps that can be re-installed from original media) aren't backed-up to removable media or a service like Carbonite, Mozy, etc.? This isn't 1995 when "backup" meant inserting and removing multiple 1.44MB floppies.

To quote Dr. Horrible:

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Freeze ray needs work. I also need to be a little more careful about what I say on this blog. Apparently the LAPD and Captain Hammer are among our viewers. . ."

A job for the human flesh search engine

[Merpy]

There was an article a while back that talked about how groups of people track down someone... http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/03/05/0253253/Chinas-Human-Flesh-Search-Engine?from=rss

Re:No backup? WTH?

[kubernet3s]

You see this all the time where I work (tech support for a small university): when people don't back stuff up, it's the computer's fault for not being a stone tablet keep in a salt-cavern in Siberia. If his son had been keeping a notebook with said list in it, the loss of that notebook to fire or water wouldn't be "a reminder of a new reality where paper and ink are no match for the whims of nature." People need to realize that expecting your computer never to be lost or to break is as unrealistic as, if not more so than, expecting a sheet of looseleaf to do the same.

Re:"Show us you're down for the cause."

[Coren22]

Most likely possibility is that the victim had Facebook set to autologin and the thief forgot to log out when he was posting the pic.