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Four Men Arrested Over Million-Dollar MacBook Heist
An anonymous reader writes: In January of 2014, Anton Saljanin was hired to drive 1,195 Apple MacBooks, valued at over $1 million, from a vendor in Massachusetts to a pair of high schools in New Jersey. The day after picking them up, he told police that the truck disappeared overnight while he slept. Later that day, he told police he just happened to spot the truck abandoned in a parking lot while he was driving down the highway. Unfortunately for him, detectives quickly realized none of these things could be true. Footage from CCTV cameras and cell-site records for his phone indicated he met with his brother and drove to another suspect's house, where they unloaded the laptops. Later, a fourth man helped them sell some of the MacBooks, often at steep discounts. The four men have now been charged in federal court for the theft.
That's what? 10 Macbooks?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
And once again another reminder that anyone carrying a cellphone is effectively transmitting their location to the authorities at all times.
...just think of the poor kids having to suffer with windows even longer than necessary....
Granted that TV cop shows are not the most technically accurate, but, still....
Have they never seen a cop show? Do they not know that iPhones are wonderful little tracking devices (better than ankle bracelets because they are actually useful to the holder)? Do they not know that the cops are going to investigate their statements? Do they not put any effort into backing their lies?
Lying to me is bad. Telling me lies that assume I'm either lazy or stupid is really bad.
"In other news, a truck full of 3d printers was stolen just outside of Salem, MA last night. Driver Anton Saljanin III reported that he had been hired to drive 1,195 Makerbot XPs, valued at over $1 million, from a vendor in Massachusetts to a pair of high schools in New Jersey. The day after picking them up, according to his report, the truck disappeared overnight while he slept. The truck was spotted again the subsequent day, abandoned in a parking lot, but its cargo was no longer present."
"Also on Police Beat today: a large shipment full of polyamide filament, copper pellets, capacitors, resistors, silicon wafers, lithography photoresist, and 530 other raw materials was reported stolen just outside of Boston this morning. Driver Gjon Saljanin III described to the police how he had been hired to drive the supplies to a pair of New Jersey high schools from their warehouse in Massachusetts..."
You don't exist. Go away.
I was actually wondering if they were reported by the vice principal trying to monitor children in their homes with "educational spyware" installed on the laptops, much like that previously reported on Slashdot.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/...
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The ironically anagramed "Car case closes"
You don't exist. Go away.
The real thieves are whomever specified and ordered all those Macbooks for school kids. Overpriced status hardware that will mean nothing to rooms full of impatient adolescents. The theft victims are the taxpayers. I'm sure there's an Apple sales rep involved and some school adminstrator who got nice swag out of the deal.
Why not more reasonably priced hardware? Chromebooks or even some 'doze laptops. Apple branded stuff, like Coach handbags is for snobby individuals, not semi-enterprise settings like a school.
Here's your TCO cue, shills.
If this hadn't been an apple product - like say some TVs for schools - would this have warranted mention? I don't track the changes in editors and who's now putting these up (dice, etc), but this article calls out for moderators being able to moderate the post-worthiness of the article. It'd be useful if those with mod points can mod-down the article so it doesn't appear unless you have your thresholds set to view meaningless filler posts. How bout it, editors?
There's a cynical, snarky, conspiracy-theory-esque part of me that wants to say, "This is propaganda from the authorities, indoctrinating the general public that law enforcement is infallable, nigh-unto omniscent and omnipotent, so you'd better never consider breaking any law for any reason because you'll always get caught", but the truth of the matter is, the average crook really isn't that smart in the first place, otherwise they'd probably apply themselves to legitimate enterprises to make money instead of turning to crime. Obvious poor planning and a lack of foresight and imagination is what brought this little heist down in the end, not any top-notch police work. I think the average slashdotter could have planned and executed it better.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
If you ever want to get away with something, NEVER TELL ANYONE, especially SIRI and Cortana !!!
Modern Day version of it "fell off the truck"
This is an everyday occurrence. Maybe not this particular variety, but a whole bunch of stuff "falls off the truck." I had an aunt who had all of her wedding gifts stolen by the moving company basically the same way, a fortune worth of irreplaceable gifts. The town plumber when I was out east would poke his head out of jobs every few minutes to check on his truck because another plumber had just had his truck stolen with all of his plumbing equipment in it. When I suggested a camera, he pointed out, "yeah, but I'd rather not get shot."
Engineers don't usually knowingly deal with real criminals, fortunately. But it turns out crime is a thing.
your Macs and your Dells were likely built in the same building.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
footage from CCTV isn't admissable as evidence, it's useful for extracting confessions and that's it. Cell-site tracking, on the other hand, is not only admissable as evidence, so are call records that can be used to prove in the first instance that the handset was in the possession of the accused the entire time, and then the map is revealed showing a time-ticked track of the route he took with pinpointed location of CCTV cameras showing stills of him passing their fields of view and his signed confession that the images are in fact showing him.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
If you grill up a Big Mac and a t-bone steak in the same kitchen, are they going to be of the same quality?
You mean more cheaply made laptops? Sure, the school could have done that, but then they'd be getting what they paid for. A plastic Chromebook isn't going to take the abuse of an aluminum case and is going to be far more limited in what it can do. An equivalently speced "doze" laptop is going to cost you an equivalent price, with any meager savings made up for by the higher maintenance cost of running Windows.
probably, if you use actual beef in your big mac rather than the rusk-packed crap they use...
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
CCTV isn't admissable as evidence because PHYSICS.
At twelve feet, even a HD CCTV camera, which has a coverage angle of ~120 degrees, cannot separate a person's eyes.
Sure, you can make out what colour clothes someone is wearing, but all you can do with that is extract a confession.
"Do you own a yellow t-shirt and blue jeans?"
"Yes."
[established, show CCTV]
"Is this you walking down the street?"
"Yes."
"This footage is taken from the bank CCTV outside right before you robbed that old lady. You are hereby charged with armed robbery and murder."
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
hoo really nice article :)