an epic tale of how social networking will get your stuff stolen.

[ace_of_something]

It's no secret if you've read my posts/threads that I'm a detective. What the fuck do you mean you haven't read my posts!?

Specifically the kind that goes after fraud, burglaries, and robberies and things of that ilk.
I won't usually discuss open cases here for obvious reasons. So, I've been waiting to close this one so I can tell you this.

So we had a rash of burglaries. Mostly in the same neighborhood. All done in a similar method (with the same type of tools) Going straight for the valuables not tearing the house apart like most burglars do. Which shows that the victim knows the thief or they've at least been in the house.

The victim almost always tells me what exactly they were doing as soon as I arrive. The other common thread was "I was at a concert" or "Was going to see a movie" always an event that will take a while. Furthering the idea that they might know the thief.

After doing a great number of (boring)things in the investigation (foot work as we call it) we had enough eyewitness evidence to bring in a suspect.

Spoiler: so we brought him in

Well, the guy broke down at 38 minutes (yes, we clock ourselves). Then I asked him how he choose his houses. He said
"I check twitter"
"The website?"
"Yes"
"Care to elaborate?"
"I follow a lot of people on twitter and If I know where they live I wait until they post that they're going somewhere that they'll be gone for a while and break in then. Most of them are people I met at parties or I hang out with one of their friends."

So there you have it.
We just released a statement to the local news yesterday detailing this stuff so they can warn people not to post 'i'm not home' on twitter. I'm sure they'll run a piece on the next slow news day.

 

[Hawgh]

This just goes to show that you can't keep an entrepenreur down.
Can be kept in jail, though.

 

[Andrew9001]

The morals of the story:
Don't give out too much information over the internet, don't announce your absence over the internet, and don't own valuable stuff.

 

[Purple Shrimp]

It's no secret if you've read my posts/threads that I'm a detective.

that's pretty cool

 

[Kajin]

The morals of the story:
Don't give out too much information over the internet, don't announce your absence over the internet, and don't own valuable stuff.

What's that phrase I'm looking for? Uhm... Oh, yeah! Quoted for truth, I believe it was.

 

[ace_of_something]

The morals of the story:
Don't give out too much information over the internet, don't announce your absence over the internet, and don't own valuable stuff.

I think we're all screwed on this one cuz one thing he stole from every place was gaming systems and computers.

Burglars love gaming systems they're easy to carry and easy to re-sell.

 

[vaderaider]

Well first off your cool, only reason I made an acount on twitter was to follow Yahtzee and some other people off the internet.

 

[Kajin]

The morals of the story:
Don't give out too much information over the internet, don't announce your absence over the internet, and don't own valuable stuff.

I think we're all screwed on this one cuz one thing he stole from every place was gaming systems and computers.

Burglars love gaming systems they're easy to carry and easy to re-sell.

Indeed they are.

 

[Eleuthera]

We had something similar over the summer here. The police warned people not to put their facebook/hyves statusses to "on vacation, back in..." which apparently a lot of people had done...

 

[Aesir23]

I've seen you around but I never knew you were a detective or even in Law Enforcement. Well, glad you caught the guy. And I'm certainly going to be more careful about what I post on facebook (I refuse to use Twitter).

 

[Cowabungaa]

We actually had a similar story on the news here a while ago, only with the Dutch version of MySpace.

And as a detective, you must also know that this sort of things already exists from the time that voicemail was still high-tech. Things like Twitter and Facebook only make it easier.

Also, as a detective, you're easily the coolest person on this site. You must own a fedora and classic raincoat and retell your experiences to yourself while looking through window blings, you must.

 

[fd18e3d0-816e-11e4-b4a9-0800200c9a66]

Another thing some people do without realising is to put there whole address into their SatNav under 'Home'. Lose that while your on holiday and someone instantly has your address and they know your not at home.

 

[ace_of_something]

We actually had a similar story on the news here a while ago, only with the Dutch version of MySpace.

And as a detective, you must also know that this sort of things already exists from the time that voicemail was still high-tech. Things like Twitter and Facebook only make it easier.

Also, as a detective, you're easily the coolest person on this site. You must own a fedora and classic raincoat and retell your experiences to yourself while looking through window blings, you must.

My Lieutenant (my department's boss) said back in the day, before answering machines were popular. People would call houses from say, a pay phone, plug it with like $3 "keep in mind this was when 5 cents got you 5 minutes," my Lieutenant would say. So, that's like an hour of phone time. The burglar would then drive/walk to the person they called and listen to see if the phone was still ringing. If it was, a window was getting smashed and some shit was getting took.

 

[iLikeHippos]

Hey dude. Thanks for the information. Now I'll make sure to NEVER ever, under any circumstances visit those social sites.

Not that I'd do it anyways... But still. This information proves to be quite useful. Than again, common sense could prevent it from happening.

Thanks to you, I got something to gossip about ^.^

 

[NeuroShock]

Ever thought of laying traps this way? Could catch a lot of theives if you baited the hook yourselves.

I think it's against the law for police officers/detectives to lure people into committing a crime so they can arrest them. I believe it was called Entrapment or something.

 

[Daedalus1942]

It's no secret if you've read my posts/threads that I'm a detective. What the fuck do you mean you haven't read my posts!?

Specifically the kind that goes after fraud, burglaries, and robberies and things of that ilk.
I won't usually discuss open cases here for obvious reasons. So, I've been waiting to close this one so I can tell you this.

So we had a rash of burglaries. Mostly in the same neighborhood. All done in a similar method (with the same type of tools) Going straight for the valuables not tearing the house apart like most burglars do. Which shows that the victim knows the thief or they've at least been in the house.

The victim almost always tells me what exactly they were doing as soon as I arrive. The other common thread was "I was at a concert" or "Was going to see a movie" always an event that will take a while. Furthering the idea that they might know the thief.

After doing a great number of (boring)things in the investigation (foot work as we call it) we had enough eyewitness evidence to bring in a suspect.

Spoiler: so we brought him in

Well, the guy broke down at 38 minutes (yes, we clock ourselves). Then I asked him how he choose his houses. He said
"I check twitter"
"The website?"
"Yes"
"Care to elaborate?"
"I follow a lot of people on twitter and If I know where they live I wait until they post that they're going somewhere that they'll be gone for a while and break in then. Most of them are people I met at parties or I hang out with one of their friends."

So there you have it.
We just released a statement to the local news yesterday detailing this stuff so they can warn people not to post 'i'm not home' on twitter. I'm sure they'll run a piece on the next slow news day.

There's a satirical site that makes fun of just this type of thing. It's called pleaserobme.com (that's not a trojan don't worry, it's an actual site). Check it out, it's quite funny. It takes statistics of when you're home and when you aren't from social networking sites and posts the results on that site.