Robbed...Need LEO Guidance

[Infantry44]

Gentlemen,

Came home from dinner tonight (gone between 4:45PM-7:15PM) to find the front door kicked in. Culprits obviously "kids" & on foot, since they left the big items (plasma TVs, guitars, etc) and ran out the back with the portables (3xLaptops, 2xFirearms, 2xVideo Game Consoles). Apparently this is the 5th break-in for the neighborhood in the past week or so.

I passed on the WPN serial #s to the police, I imagine the XBox & PS3 are pretty much goners, but what about the laptops? I had some bank account #s, etc on them, but no passwords, no identity stuff. Do these crooks nuke 'em to sell clean, do they pass them off "as is," or what?

If any LEOs have any guidance, I'd appreciate it. I filed the police report, but since they probably got away with a combined total of only a few thousand dollars, I doubt the police will pursue this all that vigorously.

Appreciate whatever you got

[18C4V]

I'm a cop in California. You can kiss the weapons, PS, and xbox good bye, unless you can postively I.D. the Xbox and PS at a pawn shop or on line.

As for the laptops, try to look for the original paperwork so you can add the serial numbers to the police report. I suggest you look on line on craiglist, ebay, and local pawn shops for your laptops. Also look on line on how to protect yourself from I.D. Theft. heck you might even get lucky and see your gun in a pawn shop. If you do find your property in a pawn shop, don't confront the owner/worker, just go outside and call the police.

Canvass the neighborhood for potential witnesses who may have seen the kids casing the house. Canvass the back neighbors in case, those kids may have surprised the neighbors.

Ask the police for "crime mapping" for open source which is a database of certain crimes which can filter or data mine similar crimes for patterns. Usually if there's a pattern, usually someone will get sloppy and leave forsenic evidence behind.

I suggest you get home owners/renters insurance, a good quality house alarm and gun safe. Get a good quality security program for your future laptops. You can also get docking stations at home to prevent laptops from being easiy taken from your room or desk.

good luck

[Trip_Wire (RIP)]

Gentlemen,

Came home from dinner tonight (gone between 4:45PM-7:15PM) to find the front door kicked in. Culprits obviously "kids" & on foot, since they left the big items (plasma TVs, guitars, etc) and ran out the back with the portables (3xLaptops, 2xFirearms, 2xVideo Game Consoles). Apparently this is the 5th break-in for the neighborhood in the past week or so.

I passed on the WPN serial #s to the police, I imagine the XBox & PS3 are pretty much goners, but what about the laptops? I had some bank account #s, etc on them, but no passwords, no identity stuff. Do these crooks nuke 'em to sell clean, do they pass them off "as is," or what?

If any LEOs have any guidance, I'd appreciate it. I filed the police report, but since they probably got away with a combined total of only a few thousand dollars, I doubt the police will pursue this all that vigorously.

Appreciate whatever you got

Firstly, you had a burglary not a robbery!

The firearms will be listed on the FBI's NCIC by serial number. If they are sold or pawned in legitimate circles they will turn up.

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fbi/is/ncic.htm

Hard to say about the laptops, if you had serial numbers they might turn up in a pawn shop. Most agencies check out items against stolen property, They have a pawn shop detail that does that. I doubt that your data will be erased, unless they keep them for themselves, which IMO unlikely.

Your police report is really an insurance report, hopefully you have some type of insurance that covers your burglary. (Home owners, etc.)

In many case where juveniles or others for that matter, are involved in a series of house burglaries in a neighborhood, when they are caught the police recover many items that they have cached somewhere, sometimes in their house or apartment. The police will then check items with serial numbers against their larceny and burglary reports to try and ID the property.

The police have way to many burglaries and larcenies to spend a lot of time on such cases, unless there is evidence or witness info available to them.

Take care with your reporting list all of your items with a good description, serial numbers, model numbers, caliber special marks or ID, etc. This comes in very handy if they catch the buggers with a large amount of stolen items. Do the best that you can with non-serial numbered stuff.

Hope that helps.

[Geo]

Try this, find a teenager on the street where you live. Tell him, "I'll give you fifty bucks if you find out who broke into my house." I've used it it at work. You might get lucky. Also, alot of your dope teams or whatever you call them where you live will have informants or snitches. Just depends what Officer or Sgt. you end up talkng to. Someone will know something. Especially with guns involved. Goodl uck.

[Kyobanim]

If the laptops were Dell contact dell customer support and give them the service tags. If the service tag was enabled in the bios they can trace it when it goes online. When I worked for a college we recovered stolen Dell PCs all the time this way.

[Puertoland]

Gentlemen,

Came home from dinner tonight (gone between 4:45PM-7:15PM) to find the front door kicked in. Culprits obviously "kids" & on foot, since they left the big items (plasma TVs, guitars, etc) and ran out the back with the portables (3xLaptops, 2xFirearms, 2xVideo Game Consoles). Apparently this is the 5th break-in for the neighborhood in the past week or so.

I passed on the WPN serial #s to the police, I imagine the XBox & PS3 are pretty much goners, but what about the laptops? I had some bank account #s, etc on them, but no passwords, no identity stuff. Do these crooks nuke 'em to sell clean, do they pass them off "as is," or what?

If any LEOs have any guidance, I'd appreciate it. I filed the police report, but since they probably got away with a combined total of only a few thousand dollars, I doubt the police will pursue this all that vigorously.

Appreciate whatever you got

I had a similar situation concerning Xbox and Playstations being stolen. Now if they are indeed young as in my case, they will go to a local gamestop which purchases the systems for cash. Just give them a call, and inform them yours were stolen, its a requirement for I.D. and finger prints to be taken during trade-ins for this exact situation.

That being said, someone in the neighborhood may have noticed something, especially since you were gone during such early hours.

Considering that you left around two and a half hours, and the people had the balls to break in to your house without a vehicle most likely means they live in your neighborhood. The fact that your neighborhood has had an increasing amount of burglaries means that its someone near. Either that, or an extremely dumb criminal is jogging to your neighborhood and breaking into houses taking chances. My guess would be somebody's kids in a house nearby have a few extra toys. However my only experience with cases like this are the two times I have been involved in like situations (both times the perps were caught immediately) a Criminal Justice major, and a father whose been in law enforcement for nineteen years.



Good luck, I hope everything works out for you.

[JJ_BPK]

If the laptops were Dell contact dell customer support and give them the service tags. If the service tag was enabled in the bios they can trace it when it goes online. When I worked for a college we recovered stolen Dell PCs all the time this way.

Additionally, If you had auto-update for Windows, the system will contact MS to check for updates as soon as it is connected to an IP service.

MS may be able to tell the LEO's where the system is??

[Infantry44]

Gentlemen,

I appreciate the guidance. I took some action today (alert $$$ accounts, change passwords, etc) and the folks will be monitoring the situation while I'm gone. Back to CMK for SUT tomorrow. Life goes on.