“Police said on Saturday they suspect four or five people were involved in the theft of almost $2 million in electronics when a truck driver discovered his tractor trailer missing from a rest stop,” Susan Guyett reports for Reuters.
“Chesterfield, Indiana police officer Mike Milbourn said the cab of the missing truck was found within a half mile of where it was taken but its trailer containing more than 5,000 Blackberry Playbook tablets is still missing,” Guyett reports. “Police said the thieves evidently had a truck of their own waiting to take away the trailer.”
Guyett reports, “Milbourn said the police hope to make an arrest in the case because they have retrieved fingerprints.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Almost $2 million” in suggested, certainly not actual, retail prices.
As soon as we read this, why did the words “insurance fraud” immediately leap to mind? Well, let’s give beleaguered RIM the benefit of the doubt, if, for nothing else, that we just don’t think they’re smart enough to even attempt to rid themselves of their PlayBook duds this way.
So, let’s chalk up this escapade to the world’s stupidest thieves whose haul is likely negative when you subtract the gas the fools used to ferret away 5,000 slabs o’ crap.
Maybe they could pawn them off as patio pavers? If not, in this case especially, crime most certainly doesn’t pay.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Beleaguered RIM’s earnings fall 71% amid weak sales – December 16, 2011
Beleaguered RIM weighed down by tablet ‘albatross’ in Apple iPad-ruled world – December 6, 2011
Beleaguered RIM’s PlayBook mistake forebodes doom for BlackBerry-maker – December 3, 2011
Beleaguered RIM misses its revenue forecast; takes $360 million bath to clear unsold PlayBooks; shares plummet – December 2, 2011
Inside job!
haha yes!
I was thinking the same thing… I wonder how much they were insured for.
Bahahahahahahahaha!
5000 tablets worth $2M. That’s $400 each. I don’t think so!
Oh you man of little faith! The BB PlayBook isn’t entirely useless. Back in Indiana, they use it as a hand warmer, meth melter & ice shaver. My iPad can’t & won’t do any of these things, non?
The load was originally on its way to a hazardous material dump site.
Is this an insurance fraud scheme – RIM hired the thieves to steal the Playbooks? RIM might hope to get paid more by the insurance company than they would get selling the units.
Hopefully the insurance company knows how little the merchandise is worth and nips this fraud in the bud.
New RIM sales team.
In related news, RIM announced to day that shipments of Playbook doubled for the quarter.
Now that is funny!! And true!
LOL!!!
If they ever get caught, they may not be able to be prosecuted. The police would have to prove they stole something of value! Might be difficult considering the market 🙂
They stole the trailer. Those aren’t cheap you know. Also the tractor (the motorized part of the rig), even if they didn’t keep it. That’s also a crime.
For more info on the type of rig stolen see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractor_trailer
…sounds like a job for Edward G Robinson in Double Indemnity.
More likely Sergeant Frank Drebin.
Must be the revenge of those RIM guys who got fired for being so drunk aboard the flight from Bejing to Toronto that it had to be diverted and the RIMidiots de-planed and fined.
MacDailyNews Take: Almost $2 million” in suggested, certainly not actual, retail prices.
I was in a Staples store yesterday, and their price for the Playbook was $499.99. And the display unit didn’t work.
Yeah, these guys are certainly contenders for the Dumbest Crook(s) of The Year award.
They should plead insanity if they get caught. 😀
Somebody tipped the crooks to a truck full of tablet computers… crooks assumed iPads of course… really pissed off crooks when they opened up the trailer. This can’t have a happy ending for anybody.
Kudos to the thieves and/or RIM for providing much needed Sunday morning comic relief. 🙂
Your mission is to steal 5000 RIM PlayBooks. The publicity this will generate will fool the public into thinking Play Books are actually worth something. As always if you are caught and arrested we will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Your fall back position should be ‘We thought we were stealing iPads,’ unless you want to appear as complete idiots 😉
Splendid!
Crime boss: ” Morons, I’ve got morons on my team”.
Nova monkeys.
In other news, five dead bodies found in the Meadowlands end zone.
RIM is rejoicing – 5000 in sales guaranteed.
That’s 5000 double shipped.
Off them at $100 a pop (they’d sell) and thats an alright chunk of change.
Trade them with other idiots of the same ilk for all sorts of crap… tools, other electronics, car parts… whatever… tweakers will buy/trade anything.
How would the sudden appearance of an additional 5000 Play Books look? When nobody has a Play Book, I’m thinking that would be an immediate tell to the police that someone was dumping stolen product.
I can’t imagine a wholesaler paying more than $20 each for them, expecting to get $45 each on the next leg of the supply chain, with an ultimate enduser price of $90.
Screw the wholesellers. Id put an army of junkie lowlifes out on the streets and move those POS hunks of plastic.
Every 2 bit thug, gang banger and meth head would have a playbook and id be sitting on a mountain of cash, drugs and guns.
Rolling them back into the legit channel would bring too much risk imho. I sure as hell wouldn’t do craigslist or ebay either, might as well just turn yourself in lol.
i also expect RIM to announce they need to make more since their remaining stock has been cleared out!
Why does MDN have such a low opinion of ‘patio pavers’ ?
Imagine their faces when the thieves saw what they had stolen!
Aaawww, crap! The only thing worse would have been a truckload of used diapers.
The thieves must have cursed themselves for being the most stupidest and unfortunate people on that day. They must have cracked their brains on how to dispose the Playbooks since no one wants them.
Insurance scam by RIMM
I’m waiting for the follow-up stories:
“Stolen PlayBooks found discarded in landfill”
and
“Low-level Mafia members found murdered in landfill”
Co-CEO’s of a SmartPhone Company; ‘I think it’s telling that thieves stole our PlayBook. These thieves know quality when they see it. Note our competitors products were not stolen. Obviously discriminating thieves.’ In other news; 3 bodies were discovered buried under a pile of hundreds of PlayBooks in a vacant lot across from a construction site.
RIM shipments are now up 200% this quarter as a result. It turns out that the thieves are a new previously untapped channel.
Like those drug busts where they seize a bunch of bricks of marijuana, then calculate “street value” by figuring how many joints can be rolled, times however many dollars they imagine a joint on the street is worth.
Silly the tractor was worth much more the the playbooks.
Totally unrelated but I need 5000 people to return playbooks for me the day after Christmas when you can get away with returns without a reciept.
Where were they delivering 5000 PlayBooks? Are there that many that want one? Maybe those 5000 PlayBooks were returns!
That would be good if they were 5000 defective or broken play books.
Aren’t all PlayBooks broken or defective? How would you know if a PlayBook were functioning normally, defective, or broken?
Steve McGarret from the Original Hawaii 5.0 :
“If they weren’t stupid they won’t be criminals”.
PSSTT!
Wanna buy a trailer?
My crew and I nicked one the other day at a truck stop.
There was some RIM stuff in the back which we palmed off to some CrackBerry addicts…
The trailer’s in really good condition…
The investigating officers need to go back out and examine that pile of what they assumed was natural fertilizer near where the tractor was found.
Suffice it to say that the trailer was the object of the theft, not its contents.
“in this case especially, crime most certainly doesn’t pay.”
Apple has been teaching their competition that for years now.
Didn’t I see this in an episode of “The Sopranos”?
I have an Update on the story:
Toronto Star:
“PLAYBOOK THIEF FOUND SHOT MULTIPLE TIMES
… apparently when the thief reported back to his leader – reputed to be Johnny ‘Four Finger’ Kolwitz – he received a tongue lashing for stealing the wrong truck. Apparently Kolwitz had wanted the truck with iPads. A witness, a homeless man resting in the alley where the incident occurred said Kolwitz finally lost his cool and pulled out his gun when his underling said “but boss Playbook iPad… WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?”… that is when “Four Finger” screamed profanities and pulled the trigger.”
FURTHER UPDATE:
Globe and Mail:
“Johnny Kolwitz aka ‘Four Fingers’ has been apprehended for multiple shooting of ‘Playbook Hijacker’ aka (in internet blogs) as ‘The Moron Thief’ .
“RCMP Captain Frank Stubbs has no comment except “I’m a Playbook user myself and I understand Mr. Kolwitz’s reaction but it is still a Crime”
“Crown Counsel Jenny Wong said Mr. Kolwitz will be pleading ‘temporary insanity’ due to the unusual stress when confronted with truckload of Playbooks instead of iPads”
“Reports say the gunshot victim and hijacker recovering in Toronto General, semi counscious , kept mumbling “Thank God I didn’t steal a bunch of Xoom tablets …”
If you follow the link to the story, it says the shipment was from Brightpoint to Waterloo, Ontario. Brightpoint is a mobile products distributor. So in other words, rather than RIM shipping product to a distributor, this is a distributor shipping product to RIM. Yep, they are unsold product or returns. Since RIM has written the PlayBook off, they are valueless.
Now the thieves are really stuck, even RIM doesn’t want the PlayBooks. They better dump them in a way that won’t connect them with the crime. If they were dumb enough to steal PlayBooks, they are probably dumb enough to get caught trying to unload 5000 unwanted, orphaned, tablets. Does anyone know; do they float?
Brightpoint manages inventory of wireless devices for wireless carriers, so their inventory is massive. Obviously, the Playbooks weren’t moving, so they were being returned to RIM.
My guess is that the thieves aren’t stupid, just unlucky. They probably assumed that the truck was shipping devices to AT&T or Verizon or Boost Mobile. Instead, they got the one shipment that was going to Canada with returned goods of the worst sort. Not that we should have sympathy for thieves, but these guys had the worst possible luck. Of course, they could have gotten a truck filled with Android devices. I’m sure MDN would have been all over that.
Interesting that the Playbooks were going TO Waterloo. This increases the potential that there is some funny insurance stuff going on here. Unless, RIM was planning to hand them out to their employees as their Christmas bonus.
What are they planning on doing with 5,000 play books? Are they gonna send them along with their christmas cards?
I think they would have been better off stealing the Volvo tractor and leaving the Playbooks. A top-end tractor ain’t cheap.
Sounds like an insurance scam to me.
The “unit shipments up” pun has been stated enough times now that it’s not even cheeky anymore.
Please read before posting.
If they ever get caught they can always plead insanity.
They just did RIM a favor. Now RIM can collect insurance on devices that otherwise would’ve have sold.
Correction: world’s stupidest thieves steal $2 from RIM every year!
The value of the cargo will probably make the heist only a misdemeanor!