Sometimes thieves aren’t all that smart – thankfully!

In today’s story, one victim of a robbery found his stolen goods on ebay and was able to get satisfying revenge.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

eBay Mishandling Stolen Equipment, or: Don’t Mess With The Postal Inspectors

I work with a company that times races – running, cycling, triathlon, etc.

The owner is a guy named John, who works at Race Timing Co. (both made up names).

At a race, some equipment was stolen. It’s expensive equipment but extremely specialty: maybe 200 people in the US use this system.

The components cost about $1,000 each, for a total of about $4,000 USD.

John attempted to contact the thief.

About a month later, the stolen equipment popped up on eBay.

John reached out to the seller via ebay, and asked that his stolen equipment be returned.

The seller was a jerk (as might be expected, from someone selling stolen equipment would be).

He said “There’s no way you know it’s your equipment.”

There actually was proof.

The thing is, photo #3 showed one of the boxes with a printed label on it:

RACE TIMING CO

JOHN OWNER

JOHNS PHONE NUMBER

It literally had his name on it.

Ebay wasn’t any help.

So John escalated to ebay to at least prevent his stolen equipment from being sold.

Ebay totally dropped the ball.

They bought the seller’s story that he had bought it at a mail auction for lost mail, which made no sense since the seller’s info was in the same town where the equipment was stolen.

The seller also tried to claim that John had no way of proving that it was his stolen equipment (except, you know, it had HIS NAME AND PHONE NUMBER ON IT).

John had no evidence that the seller hadn’t bought it had a mail auction and ruled against John.

John didn’t give up. He had an idea…

So John hatched a plan. He did what any rational person would do: he purchased his own stolen equipment back, using an employee’s name, and asked that it be shipped USPS.

He was right next to a post office, he said.

And that’s when the pro revenge comes into play: it is a felony to knowingly traffic stolen items.

John contacted the postal inspection service.

So John waited patiently as his equipment was marked “shipped”, and ended up arriving at his coworker’s house (in another state, for good measure).

And John called the postal inspection service.

He had the seller’s full name, address, and proof that he knew it was stolen.

He had police reports, pictures of his name on the equipment, matching serial numbers, transcripts of him informing the seller that it was stolen, etc.

The thief was arrested thanks to USPS.

The USPS inspectors knocked on the guy’s door two days later and reportedly found numerous stolen items.

He was charged with almost a dozen federal felonies, including felony theft, trafficking stolen goods across state lines, and lying to federal agents.

And to top if off: John filed a “stolen goods” complaint with ebay since he now had tons of proof that he had been sold stolen goods.

So he got his money back… minus shipping.

Wow! This makes me a little nervous about buying anything from ebay. How do you know it’s not stolen?

Let’s see how Reddit reacted…

This reader agrees.

This person thinks sending the stolen goods to another state was a pro move.

This reader summed up the story in a way that would only be beneficial to a potential theif.

Here’s what I learned. If you have anything valuable stolen, check ebay. Then get the postal inspectors involved.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.