No! I don’t want to buy hot merchandise! I had one stolen. I am trying to figure out how they are going to get any money of out it. Are they going up on eBay and Craigslist? Or is there an underground market? Or what?
I suppose that’s not significantly different from the way other stolen goods are turned into money.
In practically every city, you’ll find persons who buy stolen goods from thieves and sell them to clients at a higher price (a quick dictionary check revealed that the English term for this profession is fence - learn something new every day). Of course there’s some risk attached to it, so I presume that the margin of profit is neat in this business. Typically, thieves or burglars who are active in a region know the fences there and offer them their loot. Persons who are interested in buying these goods contact the fence, directly or by means of intermediaries, and perform the transaction. Occasionally, if the fence doesn’t have the desired product at hand, he explicitly instructs one of the thieves with whom he “cooperates” to steal one, so you can also “order” loot. It sounds as if you were in a movie, but these things actually happen.
My father, who is a criminal judge in a small town in Germany, has quite a comprehensive overview of known fences in our area. From time to time, when we’re in a restaurant, he discreetly points at another guest and jokingly says that if I need a nide DVD player of hi-fi system, I should ask him - he could get me one at an attractive price.
Around here there is an underground market in stolen goods in a lot of the dodgier pubs. People will come in selling anything they think you might buy but the most common things would be pirated or shoplifted DVDs, small consumer electronics like GPSs and bicycles.
There’s a black market for everything. A lot of stuff swiped out of cars is sold informally on street corners. Very anonymous, natually - someone wanting a cheap GPS hands over $20, and off they go.
<hijack>A tell-tale sign a vehicle has a portable GPS is the round mark on the windshield, or the empty GPS cradle. Unless you remove the windshield mark and/or hide the cradle when you leave your vehicle, you run the risk of have your vehicle broken into regardless of whether you carried your GPS unit with you or hid it under the seat.</hijack>
You might find your stolen item in a nearby pawn shop.
Wouldn’t locating these stolen GPS’s be rather elementry, or don’t they transmit their location?
Most have no reason to transmit their locations. They’re just radio receivers.
Well, I know that someone is buying these or else there wouldn’t be so many people stealing them. I am familiar with the term “fence” but I’ve no idea how they actually do business.
I have never had the opportunity to get any hot merchandise–nobody has ever approached me “I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy”, or “Psst, hey buddy, wanna buy a GPS?” , so I am just wondering
- What are the channels? Sounds like it’s all literally on the street.
- If I wanted to be on the lookout for someone trying to sell my unit, where would I look?
The police don’t seem to give a shit. They took a report on the phone but wouldn’t send anyone to inspect the car. Since then I’ve left three messages and they haven’t returned my call.
Sidebar: A few hours after I discovered the theft, an ad for the same model was posted on Craigslist. Oddly enough, he said he only had the unit and the cable, not the mounting kit. Only the cable and the unit were stolen from me. Coincidence? I responded to the ad with a couple of questions, he answered my questions. So I sent a second email asking to come see it, and he never responded, and the ad was pulled the same day. If he were the criminal, and were smart (doubtful) he might have deduced my name from my email address (which has my first name before the @ and my last name after), looked up where I live, and realized I’m the same guy he ripped off.
You’re right; the police don’t give a shit. I once owned a Honda that had 3 or 4 stereos stolen from it. (I lost count. It was also broken into when the stereo wasn’t in the car, and had the steering column broken apart in an attempted theft one night.) These thieves don’t care if they get $10 for their troubles. They hit a dozen cars a night and have dope money the next day.
So that’s what we have to do to keep the board up? <breaks into Leaffan’s car>
I don’t know how true it is, but the common notion is that pawnbrokers often also (knowingly or unknowingly) act as fences. They already have a legitimate business that involves buying and selling merchandise at well below retail value, so fencing would fit right in.
Many years ago, maybe 30, there was a pawnshop in downtown St. Louis that always had like new cameras and other items such as chainsaws that looked brand new. Some still had the tags attached. Now I can’t believe that someone had bought a chainsaw and had to hock it before he even had time to take the tags off. :smack:
But maybe I’m just suspicious.
Pawnbrokers may act as fences but they do so on the sly. The merchandise YOU see is totally legit, if they deal in anything shady, it’s kept far from the shop. The shop brings in the legit customer that the broker can decide to intice into something perhaps.
In my school days I walked under underpasses where homeless people hung out and they’d always be like want to buy this? They would even be like “If I don’t have it, I can get it.”
They seemed to have a bunch of gold, but it probably was fake, still even for fake it looked good.
I think what you’re asking is not specifically how the merchant of criminal goods actually sells it (pawn shop, car trunk, street corner etc), but how the criminal, merchant and customer find each other through discrete channels. And the answer to this is along the lines of how any “inappropriate” liaison–prostitution, drug dealing, illegal labor–works: if you’re looking for it, you’ll find it.
You don’t just become a burglar overnight, its not like Joe six-pack is walking home from his mid-level office job and sees a car and decides “Hey, I think it would be a really good idea to steal that.” Burglars learn their craft from people around them (“Differential Association” the internet says this is called). They will have friends who have made money doing it, or they will have friends who have friends, and someone will know a buyer. And the more you steal, the more familiar you’ll become with the local community. Good old, pre-MySpace social networking.
And the same is true for the buyers- if you’ve never bought stolen goods before, it is unlikely that you’ll up-and-decide that you want that new GPS so badly that you’re going to go downtown and just start asking bums. Most likely you know someone who got something a little “too” nice (especially if you live in a poor community), and you’ll find out from them where they got it or how they found it.
It’s just a series of subtle hints and communications that get you into circles more accepting of what you’re looking for…
I know a shady sorta guy who occasionally has stuff for sale. His approach is something like, “hey, if you know anyone who needs a GPS for their car, my buddy has some that he won in a card game (or was given to pay a debt, or some other story)”. It is always “a buddy of mine” who has the merchandise (I would guess as protection against prosecution).