Yea, had the work van broken into Sunday night. They knew their tools and grabbed the small popular items. I am out about $2500 (and growing as I notice more missing items - I have a lot of tools).
Dealt with police, waiting to see if I can get anything out of insurance. I have alerts on Kijiji for the main items and checked out the closest pawn shop.
The more I think about it the more I wonder how they move this stuff. You would think selling online and at pawn shops would be risky, as with the pawn shops here especially, detailed personal info is required. I know drug dealers will sometimes accept stolen goods in barter knowing that they can move them but that can’t be much volume.
Checking with neighbours it sounds like these same thieves (or someone with the same M.O.), have hit the block somewhat regularly. There has to be a reliable method for them to sell off these stolen goods or they wouldn’t keep doing it…Right?
There is a “Little Rock Garage Sale” page on Facebook.
I wonder how much of the things are stolen, and from how far away. Say, steal in Memphis and sell on the LR Facebook page.
People sell on-line I imagine nowadays mostly I suspect, as most small items are mass-produced and therefore difficult to trace, but a few years ago it wasn’t uncommon for to sit in a pub, particularly a less salubrious establishment, and to be offered goods at suspiciously below their market value.
You know the shady guy on the street corner selling you watches that he assures you are genuine Rolexes, for way too cheap? Nowadays, everyone just assumes that they’re cheap imported fakes. But the way that scam used to work, people believed they were real, because the unspoken assumption was that they were stolen.
Check out any flea markets in the area. I know that a lot of stolen beauty products and over the counter medicines end up there. That is what the loss prevention manager at a grocery store claimed anyway.
I know a tattoo artist who accepts bartered goods to pay for ink work. A television worth four hundred for a two hundred dollar tattoo sort of deal. He assumes the customer is legitimate, but based on what I’ve observed, some are not.
Tattoo guy then either privately sells the tv to a buddy, or uses it to barter for other goods/services.
You don’t get into the pawnshop business without knowing you are going to deal with criminals on a daily basis. Even when they are required to log in all transactions the criminals are well aware of which stores sometimes forget their requirements. I’ve found that most burglars don’t have an Ebay account or have a computer beyond the crappy pay as you go phone they got from Walmart. They don’t want to deal with paypal or waiting for payment. They want cash. However they are starting to use the Let Go app since it allows them to sell locally and get cash right away.
Shoplifters will take the vitamins, razors, baby formula and tylenol they steal and sell them to the bodegas in the couple of inner city areas that are close.
Having dealt with a lot of ex-crims that love to share their tales, thieves as a rule don’t sell to the public. They sell to fences.
Why so much theft? Because fences only will pay 25 to 30 cents on a dollar.
So if you have $2,500 worth of items stolen, $750 in cash from a fence. More likely less.
The fence is the one who knows what will sell, who to sell it to and HOW to sell it.
And more importantly what to do with the money, once it sells, to make it look like a legitimate business.
Cash is a tough business now and banks are easily over-reacting. I recently had a three thousand dollar loan repaid to me in cash. I deposited it, and the next day the bank informed me that they were closing my account for “suspicious activity.” Even though I had the account for 20 years and the bank manager said, “Sorry that’s the way it goes” and gave me a cashier’s check for my money and said “there’s the door.”
So the profit from things like this is getting less and less.
There’s a jewelry store not far from me which is well known as a fence. (They have a big sign outside in English and Spanish notifying everyone that they buy gold.)
I know a guy who had a burglary and his wife’s jewelry was cleaned out. He pleaded with the police to raid the fence, as he was sure the stuff would be there. The police hemmed and hawed, but finally went into the place. The guys produced all the cheaper items but claimed that that was all they bought, and - to my knowledge - the guy never recovered the rest.
As was mentioned in the article it is being used as a commodity and not for some direct purpose. Every Time thieves shift their focus on relatively expense household items to shoplift people assume it is for some new drug recipe or to cut drugs. Almost always it’s because something like detergent, baby formula or over the counter vitamins and medications are expensive and unscrupulous store owners are willing to buy. A $20 bottle of Tylenol gets you $5 (times the 10 you took) Then the bodega sells it for $19.