How to make money on e-bay: sell OTHER people's stuff

[Buick From Hell]

They just busted some guy near us, seems for awhile now he's been buying stolen goods from thieves (that he may be recruiting, they think) and selling them on e-bay!

How they found him: Another guy was moving into a new place, and found that someone had stolen his paintball gun from his garage. Later, he found what looked like his gun for sale on e-bay, and contacted authorities, which bid on and won the auction.

The guy had his name engraved on the gun, and sure enough, he ended up buying his stolen gun back! Pretty easy task to find the perp...

They found his whole house (fairly nice place too) chock full of lawnmowers, snowblowers, bicycles, and other assorted "garage" items that are pretty easy to steal; stereo's, computers, camera's.....

thieves piss me off!

 

[John Larkin]

You can also bet that 70%+ of stuff in pawn shops is stolen too. It's not like they are in real nice areas to begin with, at least not from my experience. Looks like that guy wins a Darwin award.

 

[Aztlanahauc]

Here in Salt Lake we have some really nice pawn shops.....like going to a store in the mall....

That guy who got busted has a real nice house....and the city he lived in West Jordan is a nice place to live....

 

[ChrisCairns]

Originally posted by John Larkin
You can also bet that 70%+ of stuff in pawn shops is stolen too. It's not like they are in real nice areas to begin with, at least not from my experience. Looks like that guy wins a Darwin award.

Wow, 70%. How did you come up with that figure?

I own a pawnshop and never realized, nor do our local police who get reports on each item we receive, that we were such criminals.

Don't forget to tell me how you arrived at that figure.

 

[John Larkin]

It's just an opinion and a wild ax guess Chris, nothing more. I also don't think the shop owners are criminals so please don't be upset. I do have one question: if the police don't consider vehicle theft to be a priority, then what are the chances they are going to followup on a pawned SkilSaw report or small item? I've been to pawn shops and bought tools. It's just odd to see so many tools that folks have suddenly found the ability to do without. CDs, albums, bicycles, jewelry (maybe), guitars, etc.; those I believe are legit since they are "luxury" items. If you can enlighten me, I'm willing to learn more about the business.

We've actually caught car stereo thieves that pilfered our vehicle inventory and they admitted to pawning the stolen stereos. That's from my personal experience, hence my suspicious comment.

 

[Brian Schauder]

Well I will enlighten you a tad John.

When you bring an item in to be pawned you must have your drivers liscense or proper identification.Then you will be asked all of your personal information,and place your finger print on the pawn ticket.You get one copy,the pawnshop gets a copy,and the police dept gets a copy.The the item sits in "police hold" for 30-60 days depending on the shop and state law before it is deemed "for sale".If there is an item sitting in the pawnshop that does not have a ticket to corralate with that item the pawnshop owner gets a notice to appear,and is in some hot water.So basically the police know about every item that has come through the store,and can compare with recent local robbery's.In alot of instances when a theif brings something into a pawnshop he is going to get caught.So with that being the case.Do you really think that 70% is stolen merchandise???The police just overlook the fact that the whole store has nothing but stolen stuff in it,and they don't care because the value of the items isn't high enough?I don't know how you arrived at your "opinion",but you certainly don't have any knowledge of what a pawnshop goes through to put "items" out on the shelf.So before you accuse a pawnshop owner with dealing in stolen mechandise and calling him a criminal(yes that's what you did),have a little knowledge on the subject or some facts to support your claim as to why you are calling him a crook.Unless of course it is just your "opinion" that he is a crook,and don't really care how things work.

 

[GNSCOTT]

Good to see that your pawn shop is legit, but around here, crack heads don't carry ID let alone a drivers license. They would have sold it to a college kid as a fake ID or something , also, most people do not write down the serial # of their property to register it, and at least around here, you do not put the item on display for 30 days (until it is checked that it is not stolen, or the person has paid back his loan ) so if you want to find your stolen item, you have to wait 30 days for it to go on display, then you can comb the pawn shops looking for it. Friend went through this when his $3k Les Paul guitar was stolen.

 

[Lee_Burough]

Originally posted by Brian Schauder
Well I will enlighten you a tad John.

When you bring an item in to be pawned you must have your drivers liscense or proper identification.Then you will be asked all of your personal information,and place your finger print on the pawn ticket.You get one copy,the pawnshop gets a copy,and the police dept gets a copy.The the item sits in "police hold" for 30-60 days depending on the shop and state law before it is deemed "for sale".If there is an item sitting in the pawnshop that does not have a ticket to corralate with that item the pawnshop owner gets a notice to appear,and is in some hot water.So basically the police know about every item that has come through the store,and can compare with recent local robbery's.In alot of instances when a theif brings something into a pawnshop he is going to get caught.So with that being the case.Do you really think that 70% is stolen merchandise???The police just overlook the fact that the whole store has nothing but stolen stuff in it,and they don't care because the value of the items isn't high enough?I don't know how you arrived at your "opinion",but you certainly don't have any knowledge of what a pawnshop goes through to put "items" out on the shelf.So before you accuse a pawnshop owner with dealing in stolen mechandise and calling him a criminal(yes that's what you did),have a little knowledge on the subject or some facts to support your claim as to why you are calling him a crook.Unless of course it is just your "opinion" that he is a crook,and don't really care how things work.

Maybe thats why this thief used eBay....

With the procedures outlined above dictated by the force of law, it would be a real deterrent to some crimes. When I used to work in a pawn shop in the early 70's we sure didn't do that.

I seldom think more gov't is a good thing....I'll make an exception in the way a municipality should monitor a pawn shop though (meaning, requiring the procedures above in the daily operation of a pawn shop will protect the public to some degree).

Interesting thread, thanks

 

[Sr2003]

Well, I agree that not all pawn shops are selling illegal stuff, but around here they seem to (atleast the one or two I know of). The problem lies in serial numbers. I have no idea the numbers on my head unit, subs, amps, nothing. Is it my fault for not wriiting them down? Sure is! But even if I did, and they got stolen, the only person who would go looking for them would be me. Pawn shops around here don't follow the procedures listed above, atleast to my knowledge they don't. I have worked with a guy who used to rip off peoples cars and sell the stuff to pawn shops all the time.

Steve

 

[ChrisCairns]

Originally posted by John Larkin
It's just an opinion and a wild ax guess Chris, nothing more. I also don't think the shop owners are criminals so please don't be upset. I do have one question: if the police don't consider vehicle theft to be a priority, then what are the chances they are going to followup on a pawned SkilSaw report or small item? I've been to pawn shops and bought tools. It's just odd to see so many tools that folks have suddenly found the ability to do without. CDs, albums, bicycles, jewelry (maybe), guitars, etc.; those I believe are legit since they are "luxury" items. If you can enlighten me, I'm willing to learn more about the business.

We've actually caught car stereo thieves that pilfered our vehicle inventory and they admitted to pawning the stolen stereos. That's from my personal experience, hence my suspicious comment.

You disparage a total industry on a "wild ax guess"??

Nothing like logic is there?

Brian took the time to explain so I'll only add a few things.

Just to let you know that in WA state we are under total control of big brother. We can't charge what we want...the state sets our figures. We must report each item we receive and we must hold it for 30 days. The police can and do inspect every part of our store whenever they want, even on a whim. (By the way, can you name another industry that puts up with that invasion of privacy?)

Do we deal in stolen property. You betcha. Only because we have no way of knowing if it's stolen or not. That's why we send in a police report each day. It shows what we have and as long as we report it we can't be charged with possession because we don't have criminal intent so I'm actually quite happy with police reports.

We have a good working relationship with our local P.D. and they trust us.

Right now we have one, yes one, item on police hold. This is a verbal request by the police to separate and hold an item that "may" be stolen. This time allows them to investigate. If it's determined it really was stolen we turn it over to them and don't get reimbursed. They usually don't pursue the thief because the courts are too "busy". Therefore it's a total expense to us and we don't like it. And one item out of the thousands we have on hand ain't bad.

Pawn shops get bashed because we deal in used property and naturally some of it is stolen. Gee, I wonder if there's any stolen property right now for sale on the "Parts for Sale" forum. Damn Bruce, allowing thieves to operate.

If you could suggest a method we can use that precludes thieves from selling us property we'd be happy to include it. Or do you suggest the population at large do away with ALL selling of used property?

 

[Buick From Hell]

So Chris, Brian--then, what you're saying is, not every pawn shop has a gimp tied up in the basement and a Harley named "Grace" parked in front?

j/k of course!

Aztlanahauc, I grew up and work in West Jordan! My granddad was West Jordan's first postmaster!

Very interesting stuff... and Like Aztlanahauc sez, lots of pawn shops here in the SLC area, they're like "chain" stores, most are branches of the same company! I'm pretty sure they don't deal too much with thieves. And anyway, why would they NEED to, there's PLENTY of legit business to be had!

And it seems to me another reason to use E-bay vs. a pawn shop would simply be the money?

 

[John Larkin]

No matter what I write, it will be further twisted out of context. I'm done.

 

[Blown&Injected]

About 10 years ago my place was broken in to and a bunch of stuff was stolen. The maggot pawned some the stuff out of my state, just across the state line in Washington, DC.

We had some serial numbers and the Police were like totally freaked out (happy) They said nobody does that and now we have something to work with.

The stuff that was pawned was not serial numbered, just jewelry. BAM - BUSTED!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway!

Seems like a pawn shop would get lots of jewelry and the descriptions for jewelry seems like it makes for a tough match but they busted the maggot. The Police called my GF and met her at the shop and the stuff was returned.

 

[88 CuttyClassic]

why is it that pawn shops in bigger cities are always in the ghetto? well people that are rich don't need to buy used goods or trade their goods in for money.

Crack head theives aren't gonna sell stuff to pawn shops as much as they will trade what they stole for drugs. I would say some stuff in pawn shops in stolen but not as much as people think.