No, just because you have a print out of a bogus ad does not give you license to steal.
And yes, in certain states you could legally shoot those people to defend your property.
Okay, I don’t want to defend thieves and jerks here, and I think in that situation I would find it rather strange that someone’s giving away everything he owns and isn’t even there to oversee the process.
But let’s say you take the ad at face value, go over, pick up a few things you like, and as you’re leaving someone stops you, claims he owns the place, that he didn’t place the ad, and you’re stealing his stuff. Your first thought might be that this is just someone who wants the stuff you got, and is trying to scam you.
It’s possible.
Seriously. Even if you were giving away everything you owned, you’d let people go into your house when you weren’t there? And give away a perfectly good horse? Most people are pretty careful about whom they give their animals away to, even if they are leaving forever.
News is now saying that a couple posted the bogus ad to cover up a previous theft of two saddles:
Those mug shots look familiar.
Wow, it’s ironic that thieves that use the internet to commit their crime never consider “borrowing” someone else’s unprotected wireless service. That would be a lot harder to trace back.
Wow. What an incredibly smart idea to avoid bringing attention to your crime. I bet if they’d done nothing, the police would have had a much harder time tracking the inital theft of the saddles.