Thieves Who Stole GPS Tracking Devices Were Caught Within Hours (nbc4i.com)

"These devices kind of look like cell phone chargers, so they probably thought they had some kind of street value," said the co-founder of Roambee, a shipping-monitoring services company, in a classic story shared by Iwastheone: [He's] talking about the hundred or so GPS tracking devices that were stolen recently from the company's Dela Cruz Avenue labs. "The moment we realized they had a box of trackers, we went into recovery mode," Subramanian said. "We notified the police and equipped them to track the devices, and in about 5 or 6 hours, it was done...." It wasn't long before the police were using Roambee's software to locate the devices and the thieves. "We were able to pinpoint the location of these trackers to a warehouse in Union City and two of the devices had gone mobile, and the thieves were driving around with them in the East Bay," Subramanian said. The two men were arrested in Alameda.
Before stealing 100 battery-powered GPS-tracking devices, one of the thieves also grabbed a beer out of the office refrigerator -- and cut themselves -- leaving behind both fingerprints and an actual blood sample.

The company is now using this 2017 episode as an instructive case study. "Roambee wirelessly synced with all 100 devices and remotely set them to stealth mode (so there's no blinking LEDs to alert the thieves) and then switched the location reporting intervals from once every hour to once every minute."

Comments

I always suspected this

[Anonymous Coward]

hand the cops everything they need to do their job on a silver platter and it still takes them 6 hours. Sounds about right. Probably had to stop for donuts and to shake down some black kids.

Re:I always suspected this

[b0s0z0ku]

Cops SHOULD be forced to act slowly by the need for warrants, etc. I'd rather a few people who steal from tech firms get away than cops be allowed to act rashly, kick down the wrong door, and maybe shoot the wrong person (or get mistaken for an intruder and shot, as just happened in Maryland). Human life is more important than some GPS tracking bugs.

This slashvertisement is convenient

[drinkypoo]

I want to buy a cellular-based tracker with its own GPS module and battery. There are absolutely loads of them on the market. I do not intend to use central monitoring, and instead I would like the location SMS to go directly to my Android phone, where I would like to have an app which plots it on a map. Ideally, the app would allow me to change the reporting frequency. Can anyone suggest a good one, preferably from a company which doesn't astroturf?

It would be a shame

[bobstreo]

if Amazon didn't use this kind of thing for their lazy thieving Logistics "delivery service"

Nice "news"

[Dwedit]

Read the date on this one: June 7 2017.