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In
Auckland, New Zealand, Christmas Eve Day marked a time of more receiving
than giving for a group of furniture thieves – clearly outside the generally
accepted guidelines of holiday spirit! A group of thieves were caught
on security cameras, but not identified, as they robbed a shipping container
filled with high end furniture including chairs and other types of furniture
in the early morning hours of December 24th.
The men cut a lock off of the shipping container (the container housed
around US$200,000 worth of furniture) that was awaiting inspection by
the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. Not long after, they returned
with a truck and, during two separate trips, made off with around fifty
pieces of furniture worth an estimated US$140,000, which included a number
of leather chairs worth an estimated three thousand to five thousand dollars
each. Even though the act was caught on tape, the tags of the truck were
not, and the criminals are yet to be caught.
At this point, one of the main ways authorities are hoping to catch the
thieves is by monitoring websites they might be using in an attempt to
unload the stolen furniture. Among the myriad ways that people can help
increase internet sales is by using online auction websites – and
authorities are watching carefully for any leather chairs or other furniture
taken during the raid to pop up for sale online.
While many web businesses spend time and resources establishing online
stores to sell their wares, often using the services of internet
marketing companies to build and maintain visitors to their websites,
furniture and general auction sites can offer a different sales model.
These online auctions use their collective networks of sellers and buyers
to facilitate transactions of everything from used computer desks to the
kind of furniture taken in this robbery. On an auction site, a seller
can remain relatively anonymous as some sites require nothing more than
an email address to register, and email addresses can be obtained for
free with very little information about the user of the account.
At this point, police are working with an array of offices representing
potential internet auction sites making it very difficult for the thieves
to sell the stolen furniture.
Increased blog traffic
on the topic of stolen goods trafficking via online sales mediums tells
us that it does indeed happen from time to time. Many of the larger online
sales auction websites are taking steps to protect both buyers and sellers
against this potential outlet for everything from stolen furniture, desks
and chairs to intellectual property and copyrighted materials.
Sellers of easily copied products can protect their intellectual property
by monitoring the large auction sites themselves, using improved
search engine rankings to uncover the auctions where illegal copies
of their products are being sold and have the auctioning of those products
stopped immediately.
In either case, the end result of a sale is the transaction of money,
and credit card and other popular online payment processing systems can
often provide many details about the seller that ultimately hopes to profit
from a sale – details the auction website itself might not collect. So,
while the furniture robbery that happened in New Zealand may have been
a tough act to pull off, authorities are confident that selling the stolen
furniture will be even tougher and will lead to the solving of this furniture
robbery! |
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