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theft + (6)

In a meticulously planned raid that took barely five minutes to execute, armed men disguised as police officers drove onto the tarmac at the international airport in Brussels on Monday night and stole diamonds worth around $50 million as they were being loaded onto a plane bound for Switzerland, officials said. (SLNYT)
posted by Elementary Penguin on Feb 19, 2013 - 58 comments

The festive season is approaching, so it's time for everyone's favorite giant Swedish straw caprid to suffer from repeated attacks. Already ("The front hoof smells of petrol") this year's goat at Gävle has been attacked. Of the 76 goats to date, 33 have been burnt (includes goats burnt down more than once and goats only partially burnt), 7 vandalised (includes goats thrown in the river), 1 run over and 1 stolen, giving a survival rate of 45%. The goat attracts international attention and attacks; in 2001 a tourist from Cleveland, Ohio was jailed for 18 days [Swedish] [English] for igniting the goat. Last year's goat survived to December 2nd (traumatic video). Gävlebocken is 13 metres tall and consists of 3.6 tonnes of straw. While intact it tweets, and blogs in Swedish and English. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore on Dec 3, 2012 - 30 comments

To the people who stole my Les Paul.
posted by nevercalm on Jun 22, 2011 - 126 comments

Exactly 50 years ago today, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Oliver Nelson recorded his seminal album The Blues and the Abstract Truth. Featuring Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Roy Haynes, and Freddie Hubbard, the Impulse album is often cited as among the great recordings in early 1960s jazz, and the tune Stolen Moments in particular has become a standard.
posted by The Emperor of Ice Cream on Feb 23, 2011 - 27 comments

“But I decided on the Mona Lisa, which was the smallest painting and the easiest to transport.” “So there was no chance,” asked the court, “that you decided on it because it was the most valuable painting?” - From Vanity Fair, the twisting, engaging story of how the Mona Lisa was stolen in broad daylight in 1911. (via)
posted by The Whelk on Apr 8, 2010 - 13 comments

Twenty years ago tonight, thieves posing as Boston police talked their way into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and left with thirteen works of art now valued at half a billion dollars, including a Vermeer and three Rembrandts. Neither those responsible for history's greatest art theft, nor the missing works of art, have ever been located. (Previously, including a comment from a MeFite who had been working security at the musuem, but not that night.)
posted by Horace Rumpole on Mar 17, 2010 - 73 comments

A letter by Rene Descartes, stolen in 1840s, recovered in 2010 by online detective work. The letter was stolen by Guglielmo Libri, inspector general of the libraries of France, who stole thousands of valuable documents and fled to England in 1848. Since 1902 it's been in the collection of Haverford College, its contents unknown to scholars, and nobody there realized that it was an unknown letter. But because they had catalogued it and recently put their catalogue on line, Dutch philosopher Erik-Jan Bos found it "during a late-night session browsing the Internet". (A Haverford undergraduate thirty years ago had translated it and written a paper on it, in which he recognized that the letter was unknown -- but nobody followed up and the letter had sat in the library since then until it was listed online.) The letter includes some last-minute edits to the Meditations, and some thoughts on God as causa sui. Haverford, whose president was a philosophy major, is returning the letter to the Institut de France.
posted by LobsterMitten on Feb 26, 2010 - 21 comments

SpineTV is investigating all forms of life from around the world through films like Neon Men, or music like New York Street Songs. Their Stolen Moments are informative interviews with some really great creatives like Michael Marriott. Lots to explore in the video realm.
posted by netbros on Feb 9, 2010 - 0 comments

Prey helps you find your stolen laptop by sending timed reports to your email with a bunch of information of its whereabouts. [more inside]
posted by signal on May 28, 2009 - 47 comments

The owner of a camera stolen in Krakow and bought on E-Bay is reunitied with their pictures An amazing story about an international effort to track down the owner of a camera stolen in Krakow, Poland. The camera was bought on E-Bay and found to have 1100 pictures on it. Through some fantastic work by members of the Australian Photography Forum, the owner of the camera was found by analysing the pictures.
posted by Man_in_staysis on Mar 16, 2009 - 5 comments

Steal *MY* laptop, will you? Now I can track you down like the pathetic dickmonkey you are. Wish you could sneak up on the asshole who stole your laptop and beat the crap out of him/her with a baseball bat? Now you can! Thanks to the beauty and glory of open source and OpenDHT, researchers at University of California, San Diego and University of Washington have created free software that enables you to track down your missing laptop. The Mac OS version even has an option to capture photos of the aforementioned scumbag so you can know your victim before you beat him/her senseless. (Note: I'm not saying that you *should* beat someone up for stealing your stuff, I'm just saying you *could*.)
posted by Geekyblonde on Oct 3, 2008 - 40 comments

Bletchley Park: A WWII juggernaut. It decrypted German Enigma (try one!) and Japanese messages on an industrial scale in huts and blocks, had an outpost in Mombasa, and built one of the first modern computers (it helped that Alan Turing was on staff). Now a diverse museum with or without a funding problem, it generated yet more intrigue in 2000 when an Enigma was stolen, and hosts a rebuilt, working Colossus that launched a cipher challenge. Beating it wasn't easy! [more inside]
posted by jwells on Jun 5, 2008 - 36 comments

A Nation Apologizes. (Sydney Morning Herald.) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal children. Here the history told from an Aboriginal perspective in Archie Roach's great song "Took The Children Away." (Youtube) (song lyrics).
posted by fourcheesemac on Feb 12, 2008 - 77 comments

Juststolen.net "was created by police officers to provide the best possible asset tracking and property recovery services in the world. JustStolen.net is an innovative tool designed to easily register assets in order to facilitate their recovery if they are lost or stolen. JustStolen.net joins forces with online auctions to help identify stolen property."
posted by tristeza on Dec 6, 2007 - 7 comments

Finders keepers? Some joker found a lost T-Mobile Sidekick, took and uploaded pics. Will they return it? Initially, no because the finder apparently wasn't a "white b***h" dumb enough to return it. Is common decency threatened?
posted by codswallop on Jun 6, 2006 - 96 comments

Are cars stolen in the US used in Iraq suicide attacks? The FBI's counterterrorism unit has launched an investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering some vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq were probably stolen in the United States.
posted by soiled cowboy on Oct 3, 2005 - 33 comments

20 Amazing Facts About Read this and cry. Or move to another country.
posted by Postroad on Dec 31, 2004 - 76 comments

Stolen: one garden gnome.
posted by grumblebee on Dec 28, 2003 - 26 comments

First Stolen Segway Recovered. It was inevitable. And it was all caught on tape. Segway owners and members of SegwayChat covertly planned and implemented a successful sting operation to recover a stolen Segway HT. (Main link goes to 5 MB embedded Windows Media video of actual sting taking place!)
posted by docjohn on Aug 14, 2003 - 30 comments

An Edinburgh man got back from holiday to find his car had gone missing. It hadn't been stolen. It had been moved by the local council because it was obstructing some drain and hadn't bothered to tell him. How far can local government authority really go in matters of personal property? [more]
posted by feelinglistless on Jan 29, 2003 - 36 comments

Beware the white van: (scroll down a bit for the content that matters) I've never been scammed before, but these guys were brilliant. The details of my sad story are inside.
posted by aladfar on Nov 16, 2001 - 49 comments

The crimes they are a'changing. This comes from the daily police log of The Union newspaper Grass Valley/Nevada City, CA. Surveillance cameras (and apparently not very effective ones) were stolen while mystery powders kept the cops hopping.
posted by tnadeau on Oct 25, 2001 - 5 comments