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That is a huge inventory. How do stolen tools get fenced? Sent abroad? Craigslist and FB marketplace? I've bought some used tools from online classifieds, b
by k2enemy 2y ago
That is a huge inventory. How do stolen tools get fenced? Sent abroad? Craigslist and FB marketplace? I've bought some used tools from online classifieds, but it always seems to be a homeowner or business owner selling one or two things.
- INTPenis 2y agoI have no idea but I remember the Sopranos episode where Christopher's father in law owns a hardware store and sells fenced goods out of it. It's not hard, but the owner can get done for it of course.
- papercrane 2y agoThat seems like the mostly likely way, at least for the new items stolen from retail. Trying to sell on craiglist/FB marketplace doesn't seem like it would scale. An unscrupulous hardware store owner could mix the stolen goods in with their stock to pad their margins. The tools could also be used as stock for 3rd party seller on Amazon.
- dylan604 2y agoThe Amazon marketplace seller is what I thought would be the most used route. Selling overseas would require hardware changes with the plugs I would think which would probably not be something they're willing to do. Unless it's common to use adapters or have people make that mode themselves as part of the "but it was cheap"??? Amazon marketplace is one of the best fences of all time.
- MisterTea 2y ago> Selling overseas would require hardware changes with the plugs Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, and a few other Central/South American countries can plug these tools right into the wall.
- dylan604 2y agoFor whatever reasons, my mind equates overseas with Europe and even Eastern Europe more specifically when it comes to trading in illicit wares. In my mind, any where in the Americas just isn't overseas. But you are absolutely right in that a lot of stolen items do end up in that part of the world.
- closewith 2y agoNone of those countries are overseas from the US. Maybe there's a case to be made for Venuzeuela and Colombia because of the Darien Gap, but that's pushing it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lupire 2y agoYou seem to be ignoring concavity.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoChina exports lots of stuff to the USA and those containers go back empty. They can easily be filled up with stolen iPhones and catalytic converters for recycling, so that they aren’t all empty. Power tools probably not though.
- dylan604 2y agoI thought the empties carried all of the stolen cars to their new homes.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoThat’s way too much trouble, and Chinese customs is really serious about their 100% tariff for DIY car imports. Stolen iPhones and cats are much easier to smuggle in, and have little value outside of Chinese recyclers.
- ornornor 2y agoAmazon comingled inventory would be the perfect vehicle for the perfect crime. They can’t even tell who shipped what, it’s basically like a cryptocurrency tumbler but for real world goods!
- NegativeLatency 2y agoIn fact it already is, lots of stuff is stolen and sold this way.
- bredren 2y agoI just read (by audiobook) two great fiction works by Colson Whitehead that include some of these ideas, Crook Manifesto then is prequel Harlem Shuffle. Great stuff.
- tdumitrescu 2y agoNitpicking: Crook Manifesto is the sequel to Harlem Shuffle, which came out years earlier. There's a third installment planned.
- bredren 2y agoAh, yes. I didn’t know about the third planned. CM I thought was brilliantly written. Just a joy to follow down each little flashback.
- throwaway81523 2y agoYeah there was a camera store in SF busted for doing the same. https://sfist.com/2021/12/21/tenderloin-camera-shop-was-front-for-retail-theft-resale-operation-according-to/ https://sfist.com/2021/12/21/tenderloin-camera-shop-was-fron... It was selling stolen clothing. Odd that it wasn't stolen cameras. I think I actually visited that store once or twice (before the bust) and it seemed like a nice little shop, though I didn't see how it could stay in business. I guess now I know.
- roflchoppa 2y agoProbably a mix of online and FB. Our local flea market has stuff tables of tools like this. Some tools are sold for like half the price. Maybe there is some organization to it, one wear house, multiple people selling.
- kube-system 2y agoEvery flea market I have ever been to in my life always has some guy with a huge amount of lightly used and heavily assorted high-dollar power tools. Before Home Depot started putting tools in cages, I used to see a lot of craigslist/marketplace/etc postings for brand new and unopened tools, posted at amazing prices.
- jeffbee 2y agoYeah, and then people act like the flea market is some precious cornerstone of the local culture. In my city there is a flea market that has dozens of freshly stolen bikes every week. There's a fund where people buy back the bikes and reunite them with their owners. Unfortunately, there's no fund supporting violence against these bike thieves.
- consumer451 2y agoViolence for property crime is a bit 18th century, no? I've been robbed, and wanted to inflict violence in the heat of the moment, but cooler heads... prison would be fine, and you know, civilized.
- throwup238 2y agoPrison in the US is hardly civilized.
- skyyler 2y agoDepends highly on the region. Most US prisons look like daycare compared to Japanese prisons, wrt prisoner treatment. (The prisons in the southeast US are an exception to this)
- throwup238 2y agoI don't really mean it in the quality of life sense as prison is pretty awful in most of the world, especially in developing countries. The 13th amendment codifies slavery into our prison system and few things are as barbaric in my mind. It's basically a few small rungs down from sacrificing prisoners to Quetzalcoatl and the rain gods, which is graphic but no more dehumanizing. States with prolific death penalties just skip the religious angle. There was an article on HN recently with a photo of a prison work detail in Louisiana that looked like it was straight out of Django Unchained: https://www.apr.org/news/2024-01-29/prisoners-in-alabama-and-louisiana-sue-over-forced-prison-labor https://www.apr.org/news/2024-01-29/prisoners-in-alabama-and...
- MisterTea 2y agoA former coworker came to the USA from Chile with a degree in Molecular Biology but couldn't find work in that field because of his language barrier. Instead he got a shitty job and build a small export company that sold used appliances and other goods from the USA to Chile. A big chunk were things like air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines. Even though Chile is a 50Hz 220V country 60Hz stuff will run off a transformer though sub-optimally which for most people is better than nothing. BUT he also found a more lucrative path by selling gun parts (mostly ammo parts like shell casings) hidden within said appliances. So there is an international market for this kind of stuff.
- wnevets 2y ago> That is a huge inventory. How do stolen tools get fenced? Sold in bulk to someone overseas is my theory, way too much effort and risk selling this stuff piecemeal online or locally. You can see something similar happening with stolen cars in the US. [1] [1] https://abc7ny.com/stolen-cars-tri-state-port-of-newark-west-africa/13589119/ https://abc7ny.com/stolen-cars-tri-state-port-of-newark-west...
- gwbas1c 2y agoMakes me wonder if they were having trouble selling? It seems "poor business" to let stolen items sit for up to a decade.
- dhosek 2y agoWhen I was car shopping back 20 years ago, there was a 18-year-old car with low milage and a salvage title offered for sale that the seller claimed had been stolen and sat in a warehouse for over a decade. I think a lot of theft in general ends up being “poor business.”
- gwbas1c 2y agoI'm going to assume that whoever's doing the stealing is being paid; as opposed to merely amassing a warehouse of tools collecting dust. So, how is the money coming in to pay the thieves? How is the money coming in to continue to pay for the storage units to store the tools? It doesn't make sense.
- duxup 2y agoFrom the article they note that some of the things they found were VERY old, sounds strange but maybe they hadn't gotten to that part / were not able to move that much stuff: >Some were stolen as long ago as 2014 Weird situation near me, some local folks where stealing construction stuff were found not far from me and ... they found everything stolen over the course of a few years. If a generator and some tools were taken, there they were, all of them together. It appeared they straight up had no plan / active effort to sell everything.
- sidewndr46 2y agoHere in Texas you can just look on Facebook marketplace. Included is photos of garages and living rooms filled to the brim with new in the box name brand tools
- Spooky23 2y agoeBay and Amazon. Where do you think fuckboy666 gets his stock of deodorant and drills from?