December 13, 2002 Archives

Mac Addicts to the Rescue

| No Comments

Wired can say whatever they want about the mac community. (Update: I note John Gruber has a great response to the nonsense).

How I Caught a Counterfeiter with a Little Help from my Friends tells the story of a scammer buying macs with counterfeit checks and how he got caught.

He emailed me a new address and phone number, the phone number again traced back to the same address for Mr. Christmas. I called the Secret Service and the Chicago PD, pleading, all they had to do was be there when Fedex dropped off the package. It was a guaranteed hit, he'd have another counterfeit cashier's check, all you'd have to do is arrest him. Like shooting fish in a barrel. "Sorry, Detective McDonaugh will be out until next Wednesday, can I take a message?" Fine, if the cops won't do it, I decided I'd just Priceline a ticket and be waiting next door when it got dropped off. So I'd know what kind of neighborhood I was looking at, I asked for help again in the Mac boards. Two Chicago residents replied, and the next morning, courtesy of Tim, I had 23 pictures of the house, the cars in the driveway (with license plate numbers) and the neighborhood. I'd like to see a Dell user do something like that at 4:30 in the morning for a complete stranger a thousand miles away.

... and it has a happy ending involving a more responsive gentleman from the local law enforcement.

update 2: There's also this story about a guy tracking down a stolen iMac with Timbuktu and AppleScript...

(via MacRumors)

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from December 2002 listed from newest to oldest.

December 12, 2002 is the previous archive.

December 16, 2002 is the next archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 4.25