Stupid Laptop Thief iChats With Owner's Friends

If you steal someone's laptop, it's probably a good idea not to identify yourself on the original owner's contact list or social networks. Of course, not every thief has that sort of common sense.

One burglar suspected of stealing four laptops made himself seen when he used one of the computers, a MacBook, to log onto the original owner's iChat account. One of the victim's friends chatted up the now stolen iChat account and was able to use the webcam chat to capture images of one of the suspected thieves and what appears to be his bedroom.

Here it is:

This man is believed to have broken into a house on Three Mile Harbor Drive in East Hampton, L.I. and stolen $30,000 worth of items.

Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward of up to $5,000 for info leading to an arrest – call 1-800-220-TIPS.

(Source: Gothamist.)

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • porschedream
    lol
    Reply
  • Hiniberus
    Only in America!
    Reply
  • bear_jesus
    hahaha gotta love stupid criminals, making themselfs easyer to lock up can only be a good thing.
    Reply
  • jonpaul37
    Looks like the more people learn and start to rely on technology, the more they lose their common sense. I guess its good though, it'll prevent more people getting robbed by this dick-sleeve.

    Not to mention that if this was a PC laptop, he could have just wiped the hard drive and re-installed windows, then this wouldn't have happened, just sayin...
    Reply
  • JasonAkkerman
    There is dumb, and then there is this guy.
    Reply
  • dallaswits
    Some people are born to greatness, but not this guy. LOL
    Reply
  • N.Broekhuijsen
    HHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA this reminds me of what happened to me a couple of weeks ago!!!!: A guy came into the computer store (I worked vacation job), and stole a netbook... of EVERYTHING he could steal, a cheap 300euro netbook...

    anyways hes stupid in the way that he was walking around for 20 minutes, rejecting any assistance, just looking around, whilst there were 16 camera's pointed straight at him...

    He threatened me not to go after him, so I called the cops on him... he was on a bicicle, in the middle of a busy city, with cops around every corner... too bad they didn't catch him then though...

    afterwards we took the images to the police and they instantly recognised the guy, and went to pick him up! They knew where he lived! gotta love CCTV facial recognition!
    Reply
  • back_by_demand
    This should be a standard security feature for all laptops, regardless of OS or manufacturer.
    If it is stolen you can go to a website on another machine, login, report as stolen and the next time the machine gets booted up it starts recording everything, its GPS location, the network it is connected to, audio & video recording, everything.
    It needs to be embedded in the mobo somehow, not on the hard drive, so even a reformat or reinstall wont protect the thief.
    Reply
  • areszues92
    That is stupid
    Reply
  • isamuelson
    Wow. If he had died, I'd say Darwin award for this loser.
    Reply