A GadgetTrak customer in Corvallis, Oregon had his new 13″ MacBook Pro stolen from his house along with other valuables. After a few days after activating tracking, reports started coming in from the device along with photos. The laptop went on a bit of journey as it moved North all the way up into Canada. The stolen MacBook finally ended up at a Seattle, WA residence and the police recovered it just this week. The information has led to a continued investigation that is still ongoing, as the device appears to have been fenced along with other stolen property.

In June of 2010 Eric posted items for sale on Craigslist before his move from Virginia to California. One of these items was his Canon EOS 7D. Shortly after posting someone called to to take a look at the camera and an appointment was made to meet at his home. He pulled the camera bag out which housed the camera and lenses and was opening it when the potential buyer snatched the bag from his hands and ran. Eric chased after him, but the thief jumped in a car where a driver was waiting and sped off.

A police report was filed with Detective J. S. Turner of the Fairfax County Police Department. They tried tracing the phone number that the thief had called from, but it mapped to a pre-paid SIM card. They tried tracking the IP address from the emails but that led them nowhere as well. Eric gave up and continued with his move believing he would never see his camera again. Then he heard about CameraTrace, he searched his stolen camera’s serial number and found several photos that were taken just weeks after it was stolen, posted on Flickr.

The photos were of a couple driving and smoking marijuana while driving in their car, apparently on their way to a concert. The Flickr profile provided additional information, we assisted police by providing additional information on the suspect including phone numbers, addresses, social media profiles and several other photos of the suspect including photos of him holding a gun and more photos of illegal drugs. We also found more photos taken by the suspect with several other cameras which were also provided to Fairfax County Police Department.

David Hoskerman and his family went to Florida for a wedding, staying at the high end Doral Country Club a well known stop on the PGA tour. David borrowed his father-in-law’s Nikon D80 and lenses ( valued at $5K ) to take photos at the wedding for the couple. David then left the camera in his room after the wedding as they enjoyed their remaing time in Florida. Then the unthinkable happened, a series of rooms were broken into in the hotel including David’s and the camera was stolen from. Several other rooms were also hit with laptops and other equipment taken with no evidence left behind, the police were at a dead end.

David found CameraTrace.com and contacted us, he uploaded several photos and we was able to extract valuable information assisting the detective working on the case to track the stolen camera down on Craigslist. The police setup a sting operation and recovered the camera at a McDonalds, along with other stolen property from the hotel. Not only did David get his camera back, but the wedding photos were still on the camera. GadgetTrak not only helped recover a stolen camera, but a lot of other stolen property and more importantly priceless memories of a couple’s special day.

Doral police were able to recover the camera as well as lenses and memory card with priceless photos.

Yesterday a Sprint store in Grants Pass, Oregon had a display Samsung Epic 4G phone stolen. The device was removed from the secure cradle with a special tool, the surveillance video showed a suspect who had hit their store before, but this time they had another weapon in their arsenal. GadgetTrak Mobile Security is installed on all of the store’s demo units.

Immediately after staff realized the phone was stolen they activated GadgetTrak before they called police. Once activated we tracked the perpetrator to an Applebees nearby. The police moved in, once they pulled into the Applebees parking lot, the perpetrator ran leaving the newly purloined phone behind.

The police are still investigating the theft and now know who the thief is. The entire recovery took less than 2 hours from theft to recovery thanks to GadgetTrak Mobile Security, which is a new record for us. The Sprint store was able to act quickly, enabling tracking themselves and were able to provide the GPS coordinates to police over the phone as they changed.

The fact that GadgetTrak provides actionable intelligence right when the crime takes place has proven to be a significant factor in the recovery process. We are able to provide police with information immediately without requiring search warrants, or subpoena’s which in this case would have caused significant delay with today being President’s Day the process would not have started until tomorrow after which the phone would be long gone.

Another stolen camera as been tracked down with CameraTrace. A Canon EOS REBEL T2i valued at $1,500 was stolen February 2011 from Mr. Lee in New York. He used CameraTrace and found several wedding photos posted online taken with his camera after it was stolen. We confirmed that the make, model and serial number matched his camera which were taken towards the end of February, the same month the camera was stolen. Mr. Lee however did not file a police report at the time of the theft “So I just went to the NYPD, and they said they wont help me. After three months it’s considered ‘lost property’, and even though I know and they know it was stolen and I know where it is, they wont do anything. I should have filed a police report! Now I am kicking myself.” We are still trying to work with the NYPD regarding this case and hopefully will get their assistance.

One of the photos found that was taken by the stolen camera

People usually don’t file police reports as they assume they will never see their device again, which was generally true, with a recovery rate of around 3% on average. Burglary is one of the hardest crimes to solve due to the lack of evidence. However, with new technology such as GadgetTrak these odds are increasingly in the victims favor. Before police can act on any evidence that GadgetTrak provides a police report must be filed this is true for all device types. If you have a device stole file a police report!

A Sprint retailer in Coos Bay, Oregon had a problem with theft of their demo units in the past and installed GadgetTrak on all of their demo devices. It did not take long to find see it in action. An HTC Evo phone was cut from its cradle and taken out of the store. Usually that would be the end of the story, as recovering stolen phones is almost impossible to track down without GadgetTrak, as the carriers will not assist and identify if the phone is activated again.

Not only does GadgetTrak provide location information for the phone, but also backs up all data loaded on the phone such as photos and contacts. Many times location is not enough for police to act, particularly as services such as Find My Phone from Apple have been known to be inaccurate, leading police to not trust just location data alone. The thief synched the phone with his contacts and working with the police were able to identify the suspects identity. We were able to identify the suspects parents, tattoo artist, dentist amongst others. The data provided to law enforcement allowed them to quickly identify a suspect they knew very well. This is the second recovery we have had for the Sprint chain and given the amount of thieves that target these stores as more expensive phones are released, it won’t be the last.

GadgetTrak customer Nathan, who attends the University of Colorado in Boulder, lives with several friends in a house. The group went to a concert and came back late one night to discover their house was broken into and several items were missing, including four laptops. Luckily, Nathan had installed GadgetTrak on his MacBook Pro and quickly logged in and activated tracking for his device. Within hours he was receiving tracking reports with photos of a suspect and location information which put the laptop in Longmont, Colorado, about a half hour drive from where the device was stolen.

The Longmont police acted quickly. Using the information provided by GadgetTrak, they were able to identify the suspect and went in with a search warrant this morning. Nathan’s laptop was recovered, the others (which did not have GadgetTrak installed on them) are still missing, however. The police were able to get additional information from the suspect that may lead to the recovery of the other stolen property. The investigation is ongoing.

GadgetTrak customer Jessie had just purchased a brand new MacBook Pro just a few weeks ago at The Mac Store. The sales representatives recommended GadgetTrak and her father insisted that she buy and install it. It was a good thing she did, because just last week the new Mac was stolen out of her car. She logged and activated tracking for the device immediately and filed a police report through GadgetTrak, shortly thereafter the device started sending photos of the thieft and other information back to her. She passed the photos on to the police and they knew who the thief was, as he has a bit of a record. The police went and recovered the laptop and Jessie now has it back in her possession, we received a great email from her thanking us:

Professional photographer recovers stolen Nikon D3 camera using GadgetTrak Camera Serial Search. The stolen camera was tracked down through images posted on Flickr after the device was stolen that were scanned and indexed by GadgetTrak. Police acted on evidence provided and recovered the camera a year after it was stolen.

Professional photographer John Heller experienced the unthinkable while on assignment for Getty Images. His prized possession, a Nikon D3 camera was stolen from him at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. It seemed the camera with lenses valued at over $9,000 was gone forever; gone that is, until just a few months ago when he did a search for his camera on GadgetTrak’s Camera Serial Search. Heller entered the serial number of his stolen camera and found an exact match with several images that were recently posted to Flickr.

Photo from Facebook profile of the stolen camera’s new owner after theft

With the help of police, Heller was able to track the images to another professional photographer through Facebook, who had unknowingly purchased the stolen camera from an individual and even had the receipt to prove it. The camera was returned to Heller and the police are currently investigating the individual whom it was purchased from, the investigation is still ongoing.

This is the first time stolen property has been recovered by tracking the serial number embedded in images. We have also learned that thanks to this recovery, the LAPD is now recommending our tool to detectives and officers in the field.

GadgetTrak’s Camera Serial Search tool is a free service that we developed that scans images posted online and extracts their embedded serial numbers into a searchable database. It allows people to enter the serial number of a camera and see all of the photos that we have discovered that were taken by that camera. To date we have indexed more than 10 million camera serial numbers, making it the largest database of its kind. We have currently indexed all of the photos on professional photo sites like 500px.com as well as all images posted to Flickr from 2006 to the present, with plans to search additional sites in the works.

If you are a reporter and would like more information regarding this recovery, or any of our recoveries, contact us directly at 503-799-8610

Coverage

TechCrunch - Embedded Serial Number Helps Photographer Find His Stolen Camera
Gizmodo - How This Pro Photographer Recovered $9k Worth of Stolen Gear
BoingBoing - Photographer gets $9K worth of stolen camera gear back with GadgetTrak
Washington Post - Embedded Serial Number Helps Photographer Find His Stolen Camera
Popular Photography Magazine - Website Helps Recover a Nikon D3 Using EXIF Data
Tecca - $9,000 in stolen camera equipment recovered through Flickr search

GadgetTrak Mobile Security was installed on demo phones at a Sprint store and is now leading authorities to suspected thieves. The software has provided location data as well as photos of the suspects captured by the stolen phones.

The thieves were able to remove the phones from their secure cradles, the store was able to capture surveilance videos of the thieves in the act.

After the theft the store activated GadgetTrak which provided location of the thieves as they moved to Vancouver, Washington. In addition we were able to access images captured by the phone of the suspects.

In one of the images we were also able to see a temporary permit on the back window and were able to read the numbers.

We tracked one of the phones to an apartment complex in Vancouver, Washington.

An investigative reporter went to the location with the data we provided and found the car thanks to the trip permit in the image.

The police are still investigating the incident, but thanks to GadgetTrak they have quite a bit of evidence in the case and it is only a matter of time before the suspects are identified and brought in for questioning.

Para ler a versão em português, clique aqui.

In June a potentially dangerous carjacking turned into a great recovery story thanks to GadgetTrak. Augusto Eto, a veterinary student in Curitiba, Brazil was driving with his friend in his car when two men with guns approached them and told them to get out. The two men then took the car with everything inside including Augusto’s MacBook Pro which happened to contain the only copy of his final project for his degree. He thought his laptop and school work were gone forever along with his friend’s car, but remembered he had GadgetTrak installed, he went home and activated tracking and notified the police.

Three days later Augusto started receiving tracking notifications along with photos of the new owner. With the information GadgetTrak collected Augusto and the police were able to find the new owner’s Facebook profile, address, work information and other evidence. The police recovered the laptop for Augusto, the person who was in possession of it claimed to have bought it from someone he did not know. The investigation is ongoing and will hopefully lead to the recovery of Augusto’s friend’s car and bring the criminals who robbed them at gunpoint to justice.

Augusto now has his MacBook back and has graduated with his degree and is practicing veterinary medicine. We are glad to see another happy ending and that nobody was hurt during the incident.

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Português

Em junho, um roubo de carro potencialmente perigoso transformou-se em uma grande história de recuperação, graças à GadgetTrak. Augusto Eto, um estudante de veterinária, em Curitiba, no Brasil, estava dirigindo o carro com seu amigo quando dois homens armados se aproximaram dizendo a eles para sair do carro. Então, os dois homens pegaram o carro, com tudo dentro, inclusive o MacBook de Augusto, que continha a única cópia de seu projeto final para o diploma em veterinária. Ele pensou que seu laptop e os trabalhos para a universidade tinham ido embora para sempre, junto com o carro de seu amigo, mas lembrou que tinha instalado o GadgetTrak . Foi para casa, ativou o rastreamento e avisou a polícia.

Três dias depois, Augusto começou a receber notificações do rastreamento, junto com as fotos do novo proprietário. Com as informações recolhidas pelo GadgetTrak, Augusto e os policiais conseguiram encontrar o perfil do novo proprietário no Facebook, endereço, informações de trabalho e outras provas. A polícia recuperou o laptop de Augusto. A pessoa que estava em sua posse alegou ter comprado de um desconhecido, mas a investigação continua e esperamos que conduza à recuperação do carro do amigo de Augusto, e que faça justiça aos criminosos que roubaram à mão armada.

Agora, Augusto tem de novo o seu MacBook, apresentou o seu trabalho de graduação e está exercendo medicina veterinária.

In October 2010, somebody smashed the front window of Nancy Wiebelhaus’s home in Portland, Oregon, and ran off with three laptops: two MacBooks and a MacBook Pro.

One of the MacBooks was running GadgetTrak. “I bought it because the same thing happened a couple of years ago when we had three laptops stolen. These kinds of property crimes are really, really common in my neighborhood,” says Wiebelhaus, an eighth-grade language arts teacher.

Once activated, GadgetTrak begins tracking location and network information whenever the stolen laptop connects to the Internet. It also captures photos of the person using the device, and sends them to the computer’s owner.

“Over the course of a week or two, I got three videos of people who had my laptop,” says Wiebelhaus. GadgetTrak also sent her an IP address that the suspects were using to go online.

She forwarded the information to Portland Police Department, which subpoenaed the Internet service provider. The ISP identified the customer who had been assigned that particular IP address.

The detective on the case immediately recognized the name of the customer. The suspect was already in jail, having been arrested recently on another crime.

The defendant, Tracy Miller, 48, ended up pleading “no contest” to the burglary. He was sentence to an additional 31 months in prison.

“The software helped in catching the person who broke into my house,” says Wiebelhaus.

Miller reportedly told police that he had traded one of the MacBooks to his dealer for drugs. The whereabouts of the other two laptops is unknown.

( Content from Jeff Bertolucci, PCWorld )

When St. Mary’s College student Michael Kuzmack lost his laptop last semester just before finals, he was crushed. But then he remembered he had software on it - called GadgetTrak - that enabled him to catch the crook. When the thief finally turned it on, the laptop’s camera immediately took a photo of the suspect.

“I was really angry, but then I was thankful that I had indeed installed GadgetTrak … and I got all this information and the chances of recovering the laptop were really good.”

The software also pinpointed his exact address in Richmond. And transmitted the information to Michael’s email. Moraga police were able to zero in, make an arrest, and recover his laptop.

“We’re able to find a GPS coordinate of where the particular person is, get a search warrant, and we’re able to retrieve that laptop, so we’ve had really great successes with some of these products,” says Mary Kusmiss of the Berkeley police department.

We have successfully recovered yet another stolen laptop in our hometown of Portland, Oregon. The laptop was stolen from a residence on New Year’s Eve during a burglary in SE Portland. The owner had installed GadgetTrak on the device and activated tracking, shortly thereafter the software sent a photo of the person in possession of the stolen device, as well as location and network information that helped lead to the recovery and return to its rightful owner.

We have had a number of successful recoveries in our home state and working with the Portland Police has been a critical factor to our success, the responsiveness and increasing knowledge of our software has played a huge factor in these successful recoveries. Thanks to our software and great detective work by the Portland Police we have not only recovered devices for our customers, but also unveiled a whole slew of other crimes, from larger theft rings, identify theft and drugs. The feedback we have received from law enforcement and our customers in these recoveries has also played a significant role in the development of more advanced solutions to recover devices and protect data.

Over the past few months Portland area schools have been victimized by a number burglaries targeting computer equipment. One of the schools had enough and installed GadgetTrak software on a number of laptops. Within a week the school was broken into again, but this time they stole the wrong laptops. The software was activated and started sending photos of who was using the stolen computer and location, with this information the police were able to work with GadgetTrak to identify the location of the device. The police recovered the laptop and identified key suspects for at least four of the school burglaries that have occured over the past few months.

Another laptop has been recovered thanks to GadgetTrak. A Mac was stolen from our customer Kari Hardre during a home burglary along with jewelry, the GadgetTrak software activated and sent location, network data and images of the thief back.

“They kicked the front door in, so I would invest that $50. It’s an investment well worth it,” said Kari Hardre.

A customer who installed GadgetTrak software on his MacBook had it returned to him yesterday. The MacBook went on long journey from Portland to Missouri after the customer’s laptop was stolen from his residence during a burglary.  After a few weeks the laptop connected to the Internet and sent its location and photos of the person using the system in Missouri. Over the course of a few days several photos and locations were captured, as well as the name of the person using the system and other data, all provided to law enforcement.

The laptop exchanged hands a few times with a full audit trail left thanks to  GadgetTrak’s software, which has had a number of successful recoveries over the past few months including one in Brooklyn, New York and another in Oakland, California all of which unveiled larger crimes and theft rings. If you are part of the press and would like more information regarding this recovery including the contact details of the police detectives who worked on the case feel free to contact us directly at 503-799-8610.

The headquarters of a prominent start-up in San Francisco was broken into, seven laptops were stolen from the premises. All of these laptops had security cables attached, however they were quickly and easily cut  and the laptops taken. On one of these laptops an employee had installed GadgetTrak’s laptop security software.  The device owner activated tracking for the device and contacted GadgetTrak. Within a few hours the device was connected to the Internet, the location of the thief as well as a photo of him was taken and emailed to the device owner as well as the Flickr account they had setup.

Using the data GadgetTrak ‘s software provided, the police arrived at the location in Oakland within a few hours and were able to identify who the perpetrator was as well as where he was staying.  Two of the laptops had been sold before the thief had arrived at the location the photo was captured. Using the photo the police were able to identify the person and get additional information regarding the burglary.

“The problem with traditional theft recovery applications has been that it relies only on the IP address, which requires the police to get a subpoena and it can be a long process taking days, weeks and even months. With GadgetTrak’s software we had the location and a photo of the thief immediately, this allowed us to move quickly and within a few hours we were at the location and had the indentity of the suspect” said Detective Marc Hinch of the Oakland Police Department “Having the ability to work directly with the device owner who had access to the data, as well as 24/7 access to GadgetTrak’s recovery team for technical assistance was also a huge help.”

GadgetTrak has recovered a stolen iMac in New York that had GadgetTrak installed. The system was stolen two weeks ago and then connected to the Internet two days ago, the device was recovered this morning.  GadgetTrak’s MacTrak software captured a photo of who was using the system as well as pinpointed the location within a few meters, all of the data was uploaded automatically to the device owner’s Flickr account and email. The NYPD followed up and recovered the system, along with two other stolen laptops from different cases.

The device was tracked using GadgetTrak’s Wi-Fi positioning to a tattoo parlor in Brooklyn, where the iMac and the other laptops were found in a back office.

We received an email from our customer with a photo of him and his recovered iMac, as well as this great testimonial:

” After a previous burglary of my home, I installed GadgetTrak on my iMac desktop, a computer I cherished for its power and sleek appearance.  Sure enough, six months later, I was robbed again.  However, with the help of GadgetTrak and the NYPD, I got my computer back!  Like insurance, this software was something I debated on getting.  When I did, I hoped I would never have to use it and was only buying peace of mind, yet it has proven its value fifty times over.  The police were able to recover two other stolen computers as well.  Words cannot express my gratitude for this genius software. ” - A

GadgetTrak has recovered another stolen mobile phone for one of its customers, this time in Edmond Oklahoma. GadgetTrak Mobile Security was installed on an AT&T Tilt that was given to one of the customer’s children who attends the local high school. The phone was stolen from the student a few weeks ago.

GadgetTrak’s recovery team worked with the device owner as well as the Edmond Police department to track the device down.  The device was returned to its rightful owner this morning.

If you are a reporter and would like more information regarding the story including police report number and contact details for the Edmond police department and detective who assisted the GadgetTrak recovery team please contact 503-799-8610.

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