right after my junior year of high school, my brother and i stole a labtop and sold it on ebay for like $800. we split the money and had a hayday.

now, i need to make some money because i only make minimum wage. i know places that i can easily break into and steal small expensive electronics. i was thinking of stealing them and then selling them on ebay.

i've noticed that on ebay, each item has a location. do the police search ebay for stolen items in areas and bust people? what are the risks?

i was thinking of holding on to the items for about a month and then sell each thing one at a time. and i would of course peel anything like barcodes and whatnot off.

what do you all think?

I think this is a Bad Idea.

SmartTart

Should work just fine, dont worry about the cops. They don't exactly have infinite resources and juristiction.

Each item does have a location, but it can be customized per item. Example: You live in Chicago. You list your item as being in Atlanta, Georgia. You can also list your item as being in The United States, The United States.

You should know though, in highly populated areas, if high-priced items are stolen from a warehouse in that area, police search for users in that area selling an abundance of electronics that match the description of the stolen goods..

Lets say you live in Cleveland, OH and you steal 40 Sony Plasma TV's from a warehouse on the east side...

All one must do is go to ebay.com, typeSony Plasma TV into the search box, search through the result pages to find someone selling from Cleveland or the neighboring areas. If they feel that they have reasonable cause to suspect that you are the theif, then guess who can get a warrant to search your house? Cleveland Police Department. And trust me, Cleveland prison sucks.

It'd be safer to sell the stuff out of the trunk of your car, which I dont reccomend either.

[This message has been edited by electric_wizard (edited 09-04-2005).]

student loan + college or trade school = no prison

im not going to steal a bunch of one type of items. the items will be...a palm pilot, a fax/copy phone thing, a clock in clock(the kind that has cards that slide through it), a fog machine, and a bubble machine.

okay, so what, it's not a big loot. but i need the money really bad and i only make minimum wage.

What city and state do you live in?

Id be careful:

I had a laptop stolen from my apartment, and the police made me give them the serial number and "supposedly" ran online searches to see if anyone was selling my shit on eBay or whatever. They never found it though, so I am assuming they were half-ass about it.

Just dont list your location and give free shipping.