It's not hard. I have (had?) a client for a while who had a pretty questionable past. He came in to our shop one day with a shiny new laptop, needing the passwo

It's not hard. I have (had?) a client for a while who had a pretty questionable past. He came in to our shop one day with a shiny new laptop, needing the password cracked on it and a new account set up. He said a friend gave it to him but forgot to give him the password. All my alarm bells went right off and I said, sure, and then checked in to it. I found some of the PO's personal information on the laptop. I called the local police department, and they weren't interested, they said to call the police department where it was (edit: maybe) stolen. I called that police department, they said they'd check their reports and call me back. I called back the next day, same thing. Second day, same thing. Third day, same thing, so I called my local police again to see if they could speed things up. Still not interested. All in all, we held on to it for a week before finally returning it to him. I really hated to do that. I've had my stuff stolen before too, one of my friends had her laptop stolen. It sucks, a lot. I really wanted to at least make sure it hadn't been reported lost or stolen. But all of the authorities involved were totally uninterested, and I didn't feel right about doubting my customer enough to contact the PO directly, either.