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

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?

Re:This slashvertisement is convenient

[DanDD]

If your use is non-commercial, you can use APRS. There are Android apps for cell phones, and numerous devices, some tiny, suitable for embedding. You'll need a ham radio license, which for this community should be little more than a minor formality.

The network to receive and map positions is global. See:

https://aprs.fi/

Re:This slashvertisement is convenient

[SuperKendall]

The flaw in the astroturf ad is that these devices were charged, switched on and had a sim fitted. Right.

That's what really had me baffled, a whole case of them already powered on? It seems like they would have maybe had a sim preinstalled on assembly, but no way would power have been enabled until delivery. To give them the benefit of the doubt maybe the case was about to be handed over to a customer...

Most decent criminals these days carry a frequency counter with detects all transmitting devices

So here's a serious question, could devices like that detect a cellular enabled device that wasn't transmitting data, only receiving? So the real question here is could a latent device that needed to receive a signal to activate be detected just by being connected to the cell network. I was thinking there must be some kind of traffic as a device moved between towers so there might be something that could be detected.

Found him!

[burhop]

"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.

Staged

[maxrate]

Sounds like this was set up to get some publicity!

Re: I *LOVE* TRUMP!

[PopeRatzzo]

Sorry to threadjack your beautiful ASCII art, but I found a more important issue to raise.

"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!?

It would be a shame

[bobstreo]

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

Nice ad for Roambee

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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...

Nice "news"

[Dwedit]

Read the date on this one: June 7 2017.

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.

Important unanswered question

[93 Escort Wagon]

How did the police find and arrest these guys without unfettered, complete access to the unencrypted content of their cell phones?

Re:Also a good reminder...

[Iwastheone]

Agreed, in my day if I wanted to 'get lost', I could do it. Just walk or drive somewhere and I couldn't be found unless I wanted to be found. The way tech has ballooned into "no one has a private life" anymore is very strange and alien to me. Humans are adaptable I know, but this life is changing fast. I do feel bad for the newer generations who'll never know that feeling of full privacy.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Re: I *LOVE* TRUMP!

[pslytely psycho]

It was DR. ZOIDBERG!!!!!