Would-Be Thief Is Duct-Taped to Pole
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A would-be thief got a taste of his own medicine in Guyana when he was caught and attached to a utility pole with the same duct tape he intended to use to bound a family and rob them, police said Tuesday.
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Slovaks were on the lookout for a foul-smelling bank robber Thursday after police said the thief had a nasty odor.
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AIKEN, S.C. - A robber who used a rusty pitchfork to stick up a bank got away - and so far, finding him has been like looking for a needle in a haystack...
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MILWAUKEE - A thief found out the hard way that robbing a woman isn't the best way to capture her heart. Two men robbed a U-Haul store around 3 p.m. Sunday, taking an unspecified amount of cash, according the store's owner.
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Only a few hours after Arlington County police detained and then released a suspect in a series of plastic-bag assaults on women, a copycat may have tried the same tactics.
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A Pennsylvania thief uses a default master passcode to get extra cash from a grocery store ATM machine. Police are baffled but Threat Level readers have an idea.
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MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A masked robber who beat his victim was remorseful enough to take the man to the hospital for treatment, but his change of heart didn't last long. Within hours the thief was telephoning threats to the victim, who was an acquaintance, authorities said.
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Police say a tipster may have helped them crack a nut-nabbing syndicate.
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There are multiple known instances of lost or stolen tapes but, to the best of my knowledge, not one reported instance of anyone recovering and maliciously using data stored on missing tapes. It's just too hard for an average thief to retrieve it.
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By Robin Fitzgerald, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.  Feb. 17--HARRISON COUNTY -- Investigators checking a complaint of a missing purse believe a suspect posed as a FEMA inspector to steal it from an elderly woman's FEMA trailer.
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On the morning of Nov. 17, Ben Adams found himself hiding beneath the retractable cover in the back of a Chevy TrailBlazer. The truck was parked in front of a warehouse in Duncanville, Texas. His friend &quot;Sam,&quot; the TrailBlazer&#39;s owner, had just finished a test drive on a 1949 Chevy truck--the same truck Adams was certain had been stolen from him four months earlier.Adams pulled out his mobile phone and dialed 911. &quot;Please help me,&quot; he said. &quot;I&#39;m at a warehouse. There are criminals all around me.&quot;The story of how a mild-mannered software developer from San Antonio, Texas,&#160;ended up running his own undercover sting operation against eBay fraudsters begins with a truck. And if the story has a lesson, it&#39;s the one told on Adams&#39;s blog: Don&#39;t mess with Texas, especially if it involves a truck.The Colbert RapportLast July, Adams sold the 1949 Chevy in an eBay auction. The buyer, who called himself Derrick Colbert, appeared to be from Georgia. And when a transport company employee showed up at Adams&#39;s door with a cashier&#39;s check for US$9,600, Adams let him load up the truck and promised to hand over the title when the check cleared.The next day, he learned from his bank that the check was a fake.Adams immediately contacted no fewer than 15 law enforcement organizations and eBay itself, but he also began some sleuthing of his own.He found that the thief had made an important slip-up. While corresponding about the truck, Colbert had sent Adams an e-mail from a second eBay address, different from the one he used to purchase the truck.Hunting Down the ThiefBy tracking the sales and purchases of Colbert&#39;s second eBay ID and contacting a Colorado dealer who had sold him a junky 1950 Chevy truck, Adams was able to track Colbert down to the South Dallas area. But he still didn&#39;t have his truck.By now, Adams had put together a 10-page packet of information and sent it&#160;to every law enforcement agency he could think of. But police didn&#39;t seem to have much interest in working on the case, and although he had reported Colbert to eBay, that didn&#39;t get him anywhere either.&quot;At this point, I was kind of depressed,&quot; remembered Adams. &quot;Every few weeks, I&#39;d do regular eBay searches for all automobiles made between 1948 and 1952 that were within the Dallas-Fort Worth area... I even searched in Craigslist.&quot;And then on November 13, his luck changed.The Big PaybackColbert had listed the pale blue 1950 Chevy for sale on eBay. Only it wasn&#39;t junky anymore, and it didn&#39;t look like the 1950 Chevy that Colbert had bought from the Colorado dealer a few weeks earlier. It looked just like a repainted version of Adams&#39;s 1949 truck. It had the same windows in back, the same missing gas cap, and the same yellow stain across the passenger side of the front windshield.&quot;It made me sick to my stomach,&quot; Adams said. He called local police, but they were skeptical. So he decided to set up a sting.First step: fake ID. He took a tip from the thieves and bought a prepaid mobile phone in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Then using a friend&#39;s well-established eBay account, he placed a couple of bids on the truck to show that he was an interested buyer. His name became &quot;Sam.&quot;He didn&#39;t want to seem too eager. In fact, he didn&#39;t want to do anything to tip Colbert off. And although he thought he might be putting his life at risk, Adams called Colbert and asked to set up a Saturday morning test drive. To be sure that Adams wouldn&#39;t be recognized, a friend volunteered to play the part of &quot;Sam&quot; during the face-to-face meeting.And that&#39;s how Ben Adams ended up hidden inside a Chevy TrailBlazer on a Saturday morning, calling 911. Patrol cars speeding to the scene met up with Adams and his friend about a half-mile from the warehouse and followed the amateur sleuths back to the truck.&quot;They probably had a two-minute window where they probably could have shut the warehouse door and hit the road,&quot; Adams said.But the thieves didn&#39;t leave, and now Adams has his truck back. And this time he plans to keep it.
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Here&#39;s a tip: If you steal a printer used to print driver&#39;s licenses, don&#39;t call the manufacturer asking for driver software.It&#39;s a lesson that Timothy Scott Short learned all too well this month, when he got arrested after placing a couple of calls to Digimarc&#39;s tech support line.Short, 33, is facing felony charges for possession of &quot;document-making implements&quot; in connection with the theft of a Digimarc printer used by the state of Missouri to manufacture driver&#39;s licenses.The printer, along with a PC, were stolen on the evening of Oct. 5 from the St. Charles contract office of the Missouri Department of Revenue, said Trish Vincent, director of the department. These offices are run by individuals who are subcontracted by the department to issue driver&#39;s licenses, Vincent said. The pilfered printer could be used to produce a license, Vincent said.The PC, however, was locked with a key, and because the key was stored in a secure location, the PC was unusable to the thief, said Vincent.So what do you do when you have a stolen driver&#39;s license printer, but can&#39;t use the PC that goes with it? Enter Digimarc&#39;s tech support line.According to a sworn statement by Secret Service Special Agent John Bush, someone who identified himself as &quot;Scott&quot; called Digimarc two days later and asked if he could buy printer drivers for the model of printer that had been swiped from the St. Charles office.The Secret Service agent later listened to a recording of this call and recognized Short&#39;s voice from a prior investigation, Bush said. The caller also gave Digimarc the same phone number Short had used in an unrelated identity theft case, Bush said.Short was charged on Oct. 11, and is facing 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to court filings.&quot;The stolen equipment contains the identifying information and photographs of between 200 to 500 Missouri residents,&quot; Bush said in the statement. &quot;The only use of the equipment is the manufacture of state identification documents.&quot;The state has sent notification letters to those affected by the theft, Vincent said. The computer contained name, address, and date of birth data, but not Social Security numbers, she added.Digimarc declined to explain how the Secret Service ended up listening to its customer support calls. &quot;Because of a confidentiality agreement with our customer and because this is a criminal matter, we are not able to comment on the incident,&quot; said Digimarc spokeswoman Leslie Constans.
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Police are trying to catch an adult seen on a surveillance videotape using a toddler to steal a purse from a boardwalk arcade worker.
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A bizarre robbery in which a bomblike device was strapped to a bank employee is under investigation by Hollywood, Florida, police. The employee told officers that two armed men abducted him from his home, taped the device to him and told him they were activating a bomb, a police spokesman said.
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A THIEF stole computer equipment from a car while it was stuck in traffic in Bedworth.  A group of youths walked past the car, which was in a queue of traffic in Mill Street, and one opened the rear door and took a briefcase from the back seat.
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Police are trying to find the owner of more than 60,000 euros sent to a boy in Norfolk by mistake.
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The Street thinks you should. A Fool weighs in.