Missing Purse, Accused Imposter Result in Arrests
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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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LAPEL, Ind. - A teenager arrested for shoplifting had filled her pockets with so many items that her weighted-down pants dropped to her ankles as she tried to run out of the store, police said. Cheyanne E.
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A swindler posing as the owner of a jewelery store outside Paris managed to steal a set of luxury pens and watches with the unwitting help of local police and a locksmith, police said on Saturday.
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Just before boarding their US Airways flight from Salisbury, Md., back to Pittsburgh yesterday, Debbie and Rick Ireland spotted a piece of their luggage that had been lost since Dec. 26.
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A slaying suspect escaped from a county jail by assuming the identity of another inmate and was on the loose for more than six hours before authorities realized he was gone, officials said. He was still at large Monday morning.
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CASPER, Wyo. - Two college students returned a lost purse to its owner, not knowing the handbag contained her life savings of $43,000.  Derek Hepner and Adam Simanton spotted the purse lying in the gutter of a Casper street Monday as they drove past it.
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WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- Paris Hilton is being investigated for suspicion of petty theft, authorities said. &quot;There was an incident, and she is alleged to have taken something,&quot; sheriff's Deputy Steve Suzuki said without disclosing further details.
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In Dayton, a state employee returns to work to find a $2,000 computer stolen. In Cleveland, someone walks into an unlocked office and takes a $2,200 laptop belonging to the state auditor's office. In Ohio, these scenarios not unusual, with state-issued computers frequently stolen or missing, according to a recent review of reports of stolen equipment by The Associated Press.
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MIAMI, Fla. -- Miami-Dade County Police announced new charges Wednesday for two women in connection with a young girl who has been missing for more than three years.
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MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. -- Three years after a South Florida girl disappeared, the two women responsible for taking care of her were arrested Wednesday.
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PRESCOTT, Ariz. - Sheriff's deputies in Yavapai County arrested a Prescott woman after connecting her to a set of stolen mule harnesses sold to a pawn shop.
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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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By Matt Gryta, The Buffalo News, N.Y.  Mar. 8--The attorney for the main suspect in the disappearance of two  elderly Southtowns women complained today about prosecutors using anonymous  "sources" to keep his client jailed on six-figure bail in an unrelated house  burglary.
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Two former employees were arrested Wednesday for allegedly stealing more than &#36;1.9 million from the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce though a check-altering scheme.
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QUEENSBURY, N.Y. - A New York City man has been arrested for the 100th time.  Officials with the Warren County Sheriff's Department in eastern New York said they found Anthony Love, 40, of Brooklyn with $1,300 worth of merchandise stolen from outlet stores in his car.
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HARRISON, Ark. - A man accused of trying to elude a debt by faking his own death has missed a court appearance and authorities are trying to find him.  Terry Wade Presnell, 43, is charged with felony theft by deception and failure to appear in court in Harrison.
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An airline passenger whose identity was apparently stolen by someone on a federal no-fly list was briefly detained Sunday, before his fingerprints cleared him, the FBI said.