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Would You Buy Stolen Goods on Internet?

Posted by wildcherry • 6/30/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: police auction site, property room, stolen goods

Many of these items have been recovered from crimes and, for a variety of reasons, never made it back to the rightful owner. So police departments can sell the items to make money for the local community, or they can have the Property Room can do the selling for them.

The website is profiting off from stolen goods - is that ethical?

www.boncherry.com/blog/2009/06/30/property-room-police-auction-goods/

User Comments

6/30/09

PamelaGifford

My question would be if they couldn't find the owner of the items, how would they know they were stolen? Now if they alerted the items to the owners and they didn't come to claim it in so many days, then yeah, sell it. I just don't understand how they could do that legally otherwise.

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6/30/09

wildcherry

Pamela good one....i just had this thought:
Since police department around the country running out of money they might as well steal items and sell it online LOL...Just a joke i hope no one in the police dept takes it as a real idea.

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6/30/09

trailofpen

Lol, is it ethical? Totally. The owners of the stolen goods have time to claim them. It's not like law enforcement agencies take the items and put them for auction right away. Do you understand that these are items that accumulate and they have no room to store them? This website offers a service to law enforcement agencies so they don't have to waste their own time and manpower to get rid of these items. Yeah they could give it away to charity, but why not make some money out of it? Someone is going to make money off of these items anyways, whether it's the law enforcement or not.

And NOT ALL of these items are stolen. Lots of things are confiscated from drug busts or are property of the law enforcement agencies themselves. You will find police vehicles, computers, office equipment, all kinds of crap for auction. I think you are doing a huge job of misrepresenting what this website and the whole entire process is all about.

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1. 6/30/09
  
  wildcherry
  
  Trailofpen,
  good point on "And NOT ALL of these items are stolen. Lots of things are confiscated from drug busts or are property of the law enforcement agencies themselves."
6/30/09

Shiley

Do you keep all your papers on your things? Chances are if you don't keep your paperwork and your driver's licence # isn't on it you won't get it back.

A law official in my area stated that everything you have should have your driver's licence or if it's jewlery your reciepts and other paperwork that comes with it.

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1. 7/01/09
  
  PamelaGifford
  
  In other words, be a packrat.
2. 7/01/09
  
  Shiley
  
  Get a file cabinet. I have everything we need in a two drawer file cabinet.
6/30/09

Stillthinking

Outside of this website, A lot of the merchandise on Ebay is stolen. I used to work at a really high end furniture and home good store: $600 Egyptian cotton bed linens and other merchandise that was fairly high priced.

We would get shop lifted all the time and see stores set up on Ebay selling our items at half price claiming they were non-returnable. BS. This store had an accept all returns policy regardless of receipt or no receipt. If they had bought the merchandise legitimately, they wouldn't have to sell it on Ebay.

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1. 6/30/09
  
  trailofpen
  
  Yeah, I used to work at bed bath and beyond and the same thing happened all the timee. We actually caught people who would walk into the store, pick up merchandise and go immediately to customer service to do a return.
  
  Also, on Ebay, most "Ebay Stores" are the real deal. It makes no sense for a simple thief to open up a store on Ebay because there are fees to pay just to have an "Ebay Store." It wouldn't make sense to pay these fees if the store owner didn't have the merchandise and sales volume to justify paying them. Also, high volume sellers usually buy wholesale and don't have high markups like retail stores. How can they do this? Small ebay store owners usually work out of home and don't have to pay for rent, utilities, employee wages and insurance, amongst many other overhead charges that an actual retail store would have to recuperate through high price markups.
2. 6/30/09
  
  Stillthinking
  
  Yes, I know many of these stores are legitimate. I am just pointing out that people who are stating that they would not buy stolen goods online may be doing so unintentionally.
  
  The thieves would do the pick up off the shelf and return game with us as well. Only, our store was small enough that if we were suspicious, we could just walk over to the shelf where the item was displayed and count to see if some merchandise was missing.
  
  In the end, our stores got redesigned so that bedding was on display, but you needed an associate to get you what you needed from the stock room.
3. 6/30/09
  
  wildcherry
  
  That's a real problem...perhaps they should tag each item purchase to the owner!
7/01/09

cazywaz

i would'nt.

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7/01/09

OneMuslim

Sometimes, you could even buy a new few month old stolen car from govt. dept. stolen unclaimed goods auction. Which is good. Awesome opportunity for pulic buyers.

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7/01/09

IntoTheAzureSea

It's difficult to know what's stolen on online shopping.

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7/01/09

Jaybetee

I bought a few things from one of these auction sites and have no problem with it.

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1. 7/01/09
  
  wildcherry
  
  Jaybetee
  which site did you buy from?
7/01/09

codesucker

Where am I supposed to get my stolen goods from if not the interwebs???

This is ethical imho. It creates a weird problem when the rightful owner shows up and wants his stuff back that has been sold. But not much of this stuff is getting claimed, I don't think.

They better wait a long time before selling it though..

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