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I was sold a stolen MacBook Pro
- Thread starter BBD90
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Could you be any more hypocritical?
You assure him that the device is likely not stolen and he should just pretend it never happened and use it; you then assure him that he will lose his money if he contacts the [potential] owner or former owner.
Got to know now apple product is simple track stolen item as 123. Only matter is that owner reporting it or not. What happened if you lost your MacBook? Will you report?
My point is that he doesn't know it's stolen it possibly might be but without any proof you don't know...
He has proof he bought it legitimately if someone wants to claim he "knew" it was stolen
Like I said, all were doing is speculating, if it's stolen then someone will contactOP
If the device was no longer desired by BleacherReport, it would not be tied to their DEP. The company would have grabbed the serial number and removed it from the system as being tied to their account so it could be sold and used by whoever bought it. This is the entire point of that product, and it's unsettling that the OP's cousin was able to defeat it so easily.
By defeating the DEP without authorization from the entity trying to secure it and then continuing to use the device the OP is likely to face charges as serious as the person that sold them the device. The OP's cousin should be reported to Apple as well, and should be out of a job for bypassing DEP without authorization.
That would be state prison, not jail. Misdemeanors/sentences a year or under are generally served in a county/city jail. Felonies/sentences over a year are generally served in a state prison.
What nobody has mentioned is the sale, although not completed on ebay, was set up via ebay. Any time a phone or the internet is involved, there is the potential for federal charges.
All that said, in a situation such as this where the buyer is clearly trying to appear aboveboard and as long as he has a clear record, the DA would almost never bring charges for possession of stolen property because he would be extremely unlikely to get a jury conviction given the circumstances as they have been laid out.
So he can go to jail for buying an item that was believe to be legit that he bought off eBay, talked about it on eBay with the seller. That's proof alone to prove he didn't knowingly buy anything.
At this point he could be clueless about the pop up and have no knowledge of computers...
Some of you are wussies thinking everyone knows everything and to turn in anything and everything when not asked.
I won't disclose my job but I'll be honest, OP should stand pat and use the computer if he can as is. If he can't I would FIRST suggest to find the seller and get a refund, if not then contact bleacherreport.
Police will not do anything or care unless it was reported by the company it was stolen
If anything some of you on your high horses should be suggesting he find the seller and he has the resources to do so...
At this point he could be clueless about the pop up and have no knowledge of computers...
Some of you are wussies thinking everyone knows everything and to turn in anything and everything when not asked.
I won't disclose my job but I'll be honest, OP should stand pat and use the computer if he can as is. If he can't I would FIRST suggest to find the seller and get a refund, if not then contact bleacherreport.
Police will not do anything or care unless it was reported by the company it was stolen
If anything some of you on your high horses should be suggesting he find the seller and he has the resources to do so...
Thanks for the advice guys, I'm already contacting Bleacher Report. My conscious doesn't let me keep the laptop. If they take the laptop and don't offer me anything I'll write down the $1,600 as "being stupid" loss.
EDIT: Also contacted the seller one last time asking him for a refund.
Wtf? Why would my cousin lose his job? He doesn't work for Apple anymore and he is not employed by Bleacher Report. He works for an IT company. It's not he's a leethaxor and defeated the DEP, he literally installed macOS without using the internet and then deleted some files in the operating system folders...
EDIT: Also contacted the seller one last time asking him for a refund.
What criminal record? I merely corrected your misstatement (ie. jail) and explained the difference to you.
Hypothetically, there are charges that could come into play (which is what I also discussed), but they never will. Not in a situation like this. There is no way they could ever get a conviction. The OP has not knowingly done anything illegal. Besides, it is pure hyperbole that it is a stolen item.
If, the item was stolen and if the original owner filed for loss with his insurance company, and if they paid out, and if the OP returned it to the original owner, in many cases the original owner has to surrender the recovered stolen item to the insurance company as required by the policy. A lot of "ifs" and fun for the MacRumors debate club.
OP: You got a good deal on a laptop. Enjoy it. You have zero evidence that your laptop is stolen. Companies (and individuals) rarely properly wipe their systems properly before they get rid of them. You should have seen the amount of sensitive/proprietary data that was on the Compaq laptops I used to have to "refurbish" when they came off of lease.
The laptop was completely unused, that's part of the reason I didn't do the initial setup right there because I was the first one turning on the laptop. The box was retail and the accessories were all new and in factory condition. If I didn't run the setup I would have never known this laptop was a corporate device because nothing else points to it.
That was not lost on me, however, there is no evidence it was stolen. Bleacher Report aka Turner aka Time Warner is a huge company. Yes, an employee could have walked a new machine out of the door, but it is not uncommon for companies as big as this to over-buy to have replacement machines to issue if one goes down. Those excess are sometimes sold off without ever being used. Although ebay feedback ratings are not as reliable as they used to be, the fact that the seller has such a large amount of positive feedback should speak volumes to the integrity of the transaction.
I think you've established your viewpoint already. I'd just quit while I was ahead.
Legally it doesn't totally matter if he KNOWS it is stolen, but right now there is evidence on line that he thinks it is the case. Thread entitled "I was sold a stolen macbook pro".
As to proof of legit purchase... what proof? Did the ebay guy give him a receipt? He has no banking record of it. As far as the law is concerned he may as well have stolen it himself, is acting as a fence for stolen goods, etc.
I'm confused. Bleacher report is a sports site, and googling it, I found nothing that seems to indicate its some sort of software for managing, tracking or securing laptops.
How is this a sign that that laptop is stolen?
I don't buy from eBay but if the seller has feedback of 1600 (I assume mostly positive), then why would he risk getting a negative.
True you would have been better off with paypal because of the protections afforded that, but help me connect the dots about this being a stolen laptop - its an open box sale so it could have been used, initially.
This was explained earlier in the thread. Apple has a program called the Device Enrollment Program or DEP. (https://www.apple.com/business/dep/) Organizations can buy Macs from Apple already enrolled in the program so that when an employee gets the computer, all that's necessary for them to do is to sign in and connect to the internet, and the computer will automatically be configured the way the company wants.
There's no way to permanently remove the computer from DEP except for Bleacher Report doing it, so if a new computer comes up with a prompt that it's managed by them on first boot, there's no possibility it isn't stolen.
Bleacher Report is not in the business of managing other companies' computers. This computer, without any doubt, is theirs.
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If that were the case, Bleacher Report would have removed the computer from their device management system before selling it. The odds of the computer being both an overbuy and not removed from DEP are effectively zero.
I saw the DEP thing, but I wasn't getting the connection with Bleacher Report. Thanks for the explanation.
[doublepost=1504267332][/doublepost]Doing more googling, I think I get it. DEP is the program, and the computer was enrolled in that by an organization and that organization happens to be the Bleacher Report., i.e., The organization can customize the popup dialog.
I was thinking the Bleacher Report was the software the software that was driving the popup.
Ah yes. I had definitely overlooked the seller dodging him after the fact. Indeed curious.
Apple or a reseller actually does the enrolling at the time the order for the computer. End user organizations, with some limitations, can enroll computers they already own into DEP as well.
I think it is unlikely that a 2017 MacBook Pro would be sold off as excess. It would be assigned to an employee who needed it and their old computer liquidated. Also, it is even more unlikely a company would offload the excess as a cash transaction with no paperwork. At the least for tax purposes on item depreciation they may need to show they no longer own the computer. Also, a lot of companies lease the computers outright. If it was truly excess, usually they also try and move them internally. Given the newness of the 2017s, if it is truly excess, even if it was outside of Apple's normal return policies, they would have worked out a deal with their VAR to at least receive a credit on the return. Where I work, we don't buy our Macs from Apple. We go to the same reseller we buy all our other computer stuff from.
What I did see happen someplace I worked was an IT guy who would take some new equipment we had and sell it on eBay and pocket the proceeds. That's what I think this is. Also, it's not hard to apply a new shrink wrap to a box.
Contacting the company is the best option. Also giving a description of the employee will help their internal investigation.
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