Thieves Clear Out NJ Apple Store In 31 Seconds 459
theodp writes "An amazing surveillance tape of a burglary in progress at a New Jersey Apple Store shows five perps in masks smashing the plate-glass doors at 2:05 a.m., signaling to the security guard that they had a gun, and clearing off the display tables with the efficiency of a Indy 500 pit crew. The take: 23 MacBook Pros, 14 iPhones and 9 iPod touches in 31 seconds flat. Estimated value, based on average selling price: $46,345. No word yet on whether Microsoft's Laptop Hunters have alibis."
On the bright side... (Score:5, Insightful)
...Apple has received a million dollars worth of free publicity for the low cost of their insurance deductible.
Amazing? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:5, Insightful)
Using a gun in the commission of a felony usually gets you extra jail time... and these guys did this for $46,000 worth of gear, which probably has a value of about $3000 with a fence?
If all I'm gonna get is $3000, I might as well... oh, I dunno, WORK for the money and not have the years in jail.
Re:Amazing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Amazing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. And the way they were slapping them closed and handling them, I'd be surprised if a few screens and drives didn't work well after this. It'll make it hard to fence them.
Because people who buy stolen property from the back of a van are known for thoroughly testing it first?
Unemployment in New Jersey 9.6% (Score:5, Insightful)
Add in their race, which looks like African American from the video, that adds quite a few more points on to their unemployment issues - for various reasons that I won't get into and which we all know.
Now, I'm by no means condoning what they did: I'm just trying to promote some understanding. When folks get desperate, they do desperate things. Just getting a job, for many, is not an option - especially in one of the worst economies in decades.
There are some doing to support substance abuse, which being an addict precludes employment. They need help.
Now, there's the crowd that does this shit because "it's cool". They're just punks they should get their asses shot off.
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. If you're going to commit a felony that will result in significant jail time, at least rob a bank or a high end jewelery store. Instead they steal an easily tracked, serial-numbered product with a ridiculously low fence-to-retail value. Furthermore, their crime is newsworthy enough ("Look at those shiny macbooks disappear!") that they manage to get coverage on major websites and news outlets.
Finally, they incur the wrath of apple fanboys everywhere now determined to track them down: "Did you see how they handled those MacBooks! They might even have scratched the case!!!"
Re:Amazing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Who says bad guys use the back of a stolen van?
In these days... I expect... One word: eBay.
Re:Amazing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:4, Insightful)
What are the fanboys going to do? Throw their frappuccinos at them? Picture a bunch of apple fanboys trying to intimidate you. You just giggled out loud, right? I mean, we're not exactly talking offensive linemen here...
Re:Well, the ads do say "Get a Mac", not "Buy..." (Score:2, Insightful)
Some thieves broke into my college's computer labs and stole all the four-year-old iMacs. They turned their noses up at the brand new Dell Precisions in the same lab...
That sounds sane, actually. Macs lose their resale value very slowly -- around 15% per year, I'd guess; but I'd be surprised if even a brand spanking new Dell would fetch more than about 40% of its retail price, and completely unsurprised if it went for 300 or less.
(Sane on the part of the thieves, that is, not on the part of the people buying the second-hand Macs.)
Re:No bars behind the glass? (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably for aesthetic reasons. Apple should have specced shatter proof glass. In fact, that's probably why the laptops were left unsecured in the store-- to tempt people into visiting during normal working hours.
I was amazed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Elementary, my dear Watson (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe Apple will be smart (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trouble is, it's fairly easy for even a public defender to get a jury to the reasonable doubt point on the matter.
I wouldn't call that "trouble". That's the whole point of the system. The government SHOULD have to prove something beyond reasonable doubt before they are allowed to force someone into prison (where they are likely to be assaulted, raped, and possibly killed). I thank my lucky stars that I live in a place where, at least in theory, I can't have my life ruined simply because some cop with a grudge thinks I might have had a gun in my pocket.
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:5, Insightful)
$3000 in 31 seconds is $351,000 an hour.
No, your math is based on incorrect assumptions. That's like saying a custom-crafted software application earns the writer $50K/hr because you paid $25K for it and it took 30 minutes to install--- even though it took 2 months to write
For a crime like this, you need to include the time spent planning, fencing, and then looking over your shoulder for the next 10 years (or sitting in jail 5 years if you're caught)... and also divide by the number of people doing it.
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:On the bright side... (Score:4, Insightful)
Low cost?
Low cost per month but how many months?
Insurance costs are always looked on as low giving the short term cost but never the accumulated costs.
Re:Too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Well... no, it sucks for the reseller. Or if the reseller is smart, then it sucks for the insurance company.
Re:No bars behind the glass? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amazing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you make that in a month, but for someone making minimum wage, 5k is half a years worth of after-tax pay. Heck, even after a healthy raise, 5k is almost 3 months after-tax wages for me too...
$5k is an awful lot of money when you're earning less than $8 an hour. I don't ever want to risk going to jail, but I can completely understand why the equation might go the other way for someone. Especially in a situation like this where unless another security camera caught an image of their getaway car, or somehow someone catches them fencing the merchandise, the risk level is pretty darn low overall.
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:2, Insightful)
I know this has more to do with kids and the lash back from the Columbine thing, but even toy guns have gotten people in trouble at some points in time. Here is one [11alive.com] and and this one more extreme that ended up with a child getting shot by police. [ktla.com] (I don't really know about these news sources, but I seem to remember stories like these and I didn't want to spend too much time looking.
I think there are a good deal of cases like this. The second story is tragic but sadly, I can see where the police were coming from. If you tell someone to drop something you believe is a gun and they point it at you...well...you don't have much time to make a decision.
My point is, the treat of a gun will probably be treated as a gun even if there was not one present.
Re:Someone's head is going to roll...... (Score:4, Insightful)
Your post is a great illustration of why Apple Stores beat the pants off most computer stores in terms of revenue per square foot. You're all worked up about so-called "loss prevention" that you've forgotten about getting people to actually buy the stuff. Apple Stores have been operating for how many years and this is the first one that's been hit like this? Meanwhile locking the product away after hours so nobody can see it would have cost Apple far more than a piddling $45,000 in profit over that time.
The goal in retail is to make money, not to prevent theft. Theft prevention is simply one way to achieve that goal. Every security measure you take must be weighed against potential lost sales. Some of your advice would make little difference, like laminated glass, but pylons and locked-up merchandise are extremely unfriendly and are likely to backfire in terms of profitability.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:On the bright side... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:4, Insightful)
Banks are nearly impossible to rob and get away with (unless it's an inside job and then you can really only do it once).
Jewelry doesn't have that high a black-market or second-hand value. I don't know this from experience, but just look at craigslist and ebay. All the engagement rings that sold for thousands of dollars retail get pawned second-hand for an order of magnitude less. Plus jewelry stores are harder to rob since almost all of them are in well-secured shopping malls these days.
Second-hand Apple products on eBay, however, fetch almost what you'd pay retail for brand-new ones. Couple that with the incredibly weak physical security of most Apple stores and it's hard to think of a more tempting target.
Re:Someone's head is going to roll...... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's a GOOD thing. It helps keep the guard alive in situations like this. A guard caught up in a robbery is FAR less likely to get shot when the attackers know that he's unarmed. Most thieves are not killers, even when hopped up on drugs or alcohol. You don't want to give the criminal any reason whatsoever to pull the trigger in a tense situation. The guard's life (even the lives of the thieves, despicable though they are) are more important than some merchandise. In a retail setting, the guard is basically a low-tech security system with a salary: he's only there to deter nonviolent opportunistic thieves, nothing more.
Re:On the bright side... (Score:3, Insightful)
The insertion force of a power adapter, magsafe or no, is not much compared to that of an ethernet jack, which they forcibly yanked out of place for each portable.
Why would the Apple store use ethernet when each mac has built in wireless? I've visited quite a few apple stores and I can't recall Ethernet cables sticking out of the sides of their laptops. It would be unsightly and Apple is very concerned about appearances. Heck. If they were going to use ethernet they might as well have plugged in a Kingston lock (on the right side close to the ethernet on my MBP).
The damage from the power connector comes when the portable falls to the ground, and impacts on the jack, forcing the DC input to come apart from the DC-in circuitry of the power stage. When you are pulling, the likelyhood of damage is minimal, since this is not really different from removing the power adapter the normal way, that is, pulling on the cord end.
Sure. If you pull the cables straight out, regardless of connector, there is little likelihood of damage. But if you pull at an angle, I can see the power connector on either the adapter or the laptop getting bent out of shape. You might not like Apple as a brand, but due to the number of times a relative, friend, or pet has yanked my power cord out of my MBP in all sorts of directions I am very thankful for the maglock feature. My previous laptop (a dell running linux) died and early death because of a bent power connector on the motherboard due to that sort of thing.
Re:You're not kidding, check out CNN's take (Score:3, Insightful)
And surely Apple is going to know what the serial numbers of the machines are?
Re:Amazing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do not meddle in the affairs of ebay wizards...for they are powerful and quick to anger.
Besides, there's plenty of people on this planet willing to pay good money for a little sweet talk.
Re:You're not kidding, check out CNN's take (Score:3, Insightful)
You're aware that there is security cam footage of this heist, right? Watch it.
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:5, Insightful)
A better analogy would be me selling you a gun, then accusing you of being armed and running you over in my tank.
Then killing a hundred thousand people.
And still not finding your gun.
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent up. If you're going to commit a felony that will result in significant jail time, at least rob a bank or a high end jewelery store.
I guess it depends where you are, but certainly in the UK most bank robberies don't net that kind of money. Largely because the cashiers only have a certain amount of cash immediately on hand - most of it's in a safe which you have to punch in a code and then wait some time before it will open.
This is why you often have to give the bank some notice before you withdraw a large amount of cash.
Most jewellers aren't much easier - and the value of most jewellery is actually pretty terrible. The main reason it costs so much from the jeweller is DeBeer's marketing.
I don't think any sort of armed robbery is a particularly useful thing to do professionally. You either target places with very valuable things to steal - in which case security will be tight and in order to make a decent living at it you'll have to rob so much that you'll draw attention to yourself sooner rather than later - or you target places with less valuable things with lower security. In which case you'll never earn any real money of any sort.
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:5, Insightful)
My Daddy was a cop. He always told us all, if you are going to steal, steal big, the penalty is about the same.
Good ole Bernie proved this to be true, didn't he. Has anyone ever scored more than he did? He scored big for what, few short years in jail before he dies? All those years living large probably filled him with enough memories to last several life times. Wouldn't those memories make Bernie's time a lot easier to do than the time given to urban ghetto punks like these.
Re:You're not kidding, check out CNN's take (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Someone's head is going to roll...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple Stores have been operating for how many years and this is the first one that's been hit like this?
You think this is the first?
Believe it or not, stores getting robbed isn't international news headlines. Even when it's Apple.
And I love how you twist the expense of their products as being a good thing - of course they make a lot of revenue per square foot.
Re:Amazing? (Score:5, Insightful)
intelligence != morality
I'll probably get modded down as a troll or something for this, but...
morality != respecting property laws (necessarily)
Most people would disagree, but a respectable argument could be made that stealing from a wealthy corporation is morally neutral.
Re:On the bright side... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would the Apple store use ethernet when each mac has built in wireless?
Interference. Put two laptops within a couple meters of each other and you'll notice it. I can't imagine how bad it would get with 3 or 4...Also, bandwidth.
Re:Someone's head is going to roll...... (Score:1, Insightful)
The expense of the machines certainly is a good thing for the company that makes them if they can actually sell them in quantity, which Apple clearly can.
There's no "of course" about their revenue figures. Apple's store in midtown Manhattan is the highest grossing store on Fifth Avenue, and I can guarantee you that they are not even close to the most expensive store there. Apple's revenue per square foot is better than Tiffany's and Harry Winston.
Re:On the bright side... (Score:3, Insightful)
A physical description of some guy selling a laptop out of the trunk of a car off Route 22 isn't going to help much, and if they're pros there's no way they're selling these themselves.
What you're describing is how the really stupid thieves get caught. The ones who have any kind of brains would fence them.
People who buy brand new laptops out of car trunks generally know that calling the manufacturer is the same as admitting you bought stolen goods and asking if they could please send an officer around to take away the new laptop they just bought.
Re:Amazing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That's pathetic! They get dumber every day. (Score:3, Insightful)