Slashdot Mirror
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."
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."
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?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That shouldn't have consumed six hours, though. They probably shot someone at random and had to fill out paperwork.
Don't you watch movies or TV? You want to wait to see if they lead you to the boss man.
"I never thought they would find me", said Waldo, after stealing 100 already activated GPS's. "People have been looking for this guy for years", said the FBI.
Sounds like this was set up to get some publicity!
"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"
BOTH fingerprints? I'm envisioning lobster-like theives here. Are we sure they weren't exposed to mutagens whilst raiding other laboratories!?
if Amazon didn't use this kind of thing for their lazy thieving Logistics "delivery service"
Trouble is, I find astroturfing despicable.
So, if anybody is interested in GPS devices that phone home and let you recover your property with or without a central server, I wholeheartedly recommend Mictrack products: I personally use the MT600 in all my vehicles with great success, and despite being a Chinese company, their customer support is top-notch. And believe me, I've tried a lot of GPS trackers before settling on this company.
There. I'm hoping this will provide some advertising balance...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Read the date on this one: June 7 2017.
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.
Yes, cutting "and an actual blood sample" off from "leaving behind both fingerprints and an actual blood sample" creates a potentially hilarious grammar error that was not present in TFS.
Lobster don't have fingerprints. Ha! Hilarious...
Dear Slashdot:
We are used to getting week old news that you scraped from other news sites days after they left the headlines.
This story is more than a year old. FROM THE OP.
If you want to push the boundaries of credibility, at least push the limits. Here are a few sample headlines you might try.
"NEW PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE COBOL POISED TO SWEEP THE DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY"
Or if you want to add a slashdot editor stamp of approval to that headline with some grammatical mistakes, you could try this:
"NEW PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE COBOL PISSED TO SWEET THE DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY"
C'mon, up the ante here.
How did the police find and arrest these guys without unfettered, complete access to the unencrypted content of their cell phones?
#DeleteChrome
Wait, wait, are you saying that AND isn't optional?!? Z0mg! Who knew?!
Cops will tell you there arent any units available at the moment, even if you have a live location of a thief.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
That's exactly where I got it from, copy/pasted/submitted it here because I dig /., I used to go by the handle "sternishefan". BTW, I am not this Creimer person.
What's the deal with 'murkins being so stupid, is it GMO? Excessive growth hormones in food? Narcissism? Greed? Cultural bankruptcy? Puritanism?
I'm not sure if you are listing causes or evidence.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Yea, sure, Don Draper...
-> I dislike sigs...
It was DR. ZOIDBERG!!!!!
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
Stupid criminals steal GPS trackers.
Smart criminals run for office.
Oh, wait...
Lobster don't have fingerprints. Ha! Hilarious...
Why not Zoidberg?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
In this case, I'm not sure what they would need a warrant for since they didn't plant the trackers on the suspects and the victim was more than willing to turn over the information needed to read the tracker location.
As for not shooting people and such, that is a matter of appropriate tactical training and takes no longer than doing it the wrong way. Either way, no warrant is required to do it the right way.
No cops should act carefully and preserve life and process. That does not mean they should be slow. The rest of the world has no problem with fast cops executing the people who called for help in the first place.
... and then there are criminals like these.
I guarantee FARK is having a field day with this one, assuming they're aware of it.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.