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Stolen Ipad

L

lakelandman

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 22, 2011
1
0
Okay so this is the first place i'm coming to right now. Recently I purchased an ipad for 300 dollars from an old friend in florida. I get back to new york talking to one of my friends who is a police officer says it is a stolen ipad. Looking through it but not enabling wifi I checked on it and found that it has FindMyIphone on it. Paranoid as i am I don't want to be out 300 dollars. I'm low on money and this was at the time a good purchase for me and my work. I restored the ipad and didn't register it through apple. Am I safe from them tracking me through wifi? or can I still be tracked down?
Best regards,
Worst Purchase/friend ever
 
did your friend disclose where this ipad came from, eg. was it his or was he selling it for a 'friend'? what was the email address that the ipad was activated to prior to you restoring it?

your police officer friend hasn't enough info to say that it could be stolen unless maybe the price might make it suspect - is this a ipad1 or 2? frankly, apple doesn't do much anything on preventing ipads on being reactivated, even if they're reported as stolen.

if your friend can't satisfy your concern that it's not stolen and won't take a refund, i'd activate it and use it. that's the pragmatic side of me talking.
 
lakelandman said:
Okay so this is the first place i'm coming to right now. Recently I purchased an ipad for 300 dollars from an old friend in florida. I get back to new york talking to one of my friends who is a police officer says it is a stolen ipad. Looking through it but not enabling wifi I checked on it and found that it has FindMyIphone on it. Paranoid as i am I don't want to be out 300 dollars. I'm low on money and this was at the time a good purchase for me and my work. I restored the ipad and didn't register it through apple. Am I safe from them tracking me through wifi? or can I still be tracked down?
Best regards,
Worst Purchase/friend ever
Click to expand...

I suppose you really ought to restore it (found in the general settings). But, don't you have a moral issue here? I'd feel pretty bad for the poor guy who had his iPad stolen, and if it were me, I'd return it. Of course, if it were me I wouldn't have bought it from my "friend" in the first place, but that is a whole other ball of wax (business+friends=messy and unpleasant).

The only problem is that 1. how does the police officer know it was stolen, and 2. how can you find out where the original owner is? I would talk to the police to find out the best course of action.
 
Posting on here kind of indications a Darwinian issue. I guess you find out and deal with it or wait for a knock on the door - even when you eventually sell it on.
 
Last edited:
I agree with Palpatine... doesn't make sense about the PO thing. Anyhow, it is best, in my opinion, to file an official complaint against the friend who sold you the stolen iPad. This way, if proven, he should be liable for the 300 you paid to him and the original owner should also get their iPad back. All in all, this story makes no sense... you bought an iPad from a friend, instead of being eager to work with it, you somehow decide to talk to your police friend who somehow knows that this is stolen and lets you take it back to your house?
 
If it is stolen you're breaking the law. Money may be tight now but wait until you're dealing with the fallout from receiving stolen merchandise.
 
bufffilm said:
i love how a lot of you are already operating under the assumption that the ipad is stolen.
Click to expand...

It's not an unreasonable assumption considering that the OP himself thinks that it's stolen. That's why he posted!

Even if it's not stolen (quite how the police guy knows is beyond me...), the fact that the OP is seeking advice on keeping hold of a stolen iPad rather than trying to contact the owner is enough for me to draw some grim conclusions about his character.

Quite what sort of reaction he expected to get on a forum full of people who love the iPads they paid for is another mystery.
 
Julien said:
I guess that is a far flung assumption considering the thread title?:eek::D
Click to expand...

the fact of the matter is that the OP doesn't really provide enough info on why he think's the ipad might be stolen other than saying that: (1) FindMyIphone was installed on it, (2) that the ipad wasn't wiped/restored to factory default, (3) that he might be paranoid.

the fact that #1 & #2 is true doesn't automatically mean that the thing is stolen. rather than jump to conclusions, wouldn't it be better to wait until he replies back with more info?!
 
bufffilm said:
i love how a lot of you are already operating under the assumption that the ipad is stolen.
Click to expand...

I said "If" which offers some doubt even by definition. :roll eyes:
And IF that wasn't enough, the ****ing thread title is STOLEN IPAD.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

lakelandman said:
Okay so this is the first place i'm coming to right now. Recently I purchased an ipad for 300 dollars from an old friend in florida. I get back to new york talking to one of my friends who is a police officer says it is a stolen ipad. Looking through it but not enabling wifi I checked on it and found that it has FindMyIphone on it. Paranoid as i am I don't want to be out 300 dollars. I'm low on money and this was at the time a good purchase for me and my work. I restored the ipad and didn't register it through apple. Am I safe from them tracking me through wifi? or can I still be tracked down?
Best regards,
Worst Purchase/friend ever
Click to expand...

The only way it can be determined if it is stolen is to run it through NCIC which is a national database that all police departments use and have access to. The iPad would get entered into NCIC by the serial number or some unique marking the original owner put on it. If it is stolen and the owner never went and filed a report along with the serial number you could never prove it is stolen. Unless you gave your police officer friend the serial number he can NOT confirm that it was stolen.
 
If the op is "assuming" it is stolen and is taking steps to hide that fact from a service that can recover it to the original owner, he'll be in deeper **** than if he tries to return it to the owner.

Op, why don't you get in touch with your "old friend in Florida" and find out where he stole it from? :rolleyes:
 
hopefully there is nothing wrong with it. Hard for a LEO (cop)to make that determination actually without searching the serial against a database or other evidence. Price of 300 from a friend may not be at all off. A couple things to consider, use time, battery life, other issues such as appearance.

I too however have learned not to buy from friends

----------
Julien said:
I guess that is a far flung assumption considering the thread title?:eek::D
Click to expand...

You got me there
 
what if the op stole the iPad and is looking to see if restoring it would let him scott free. why does the OP ask his friend how he got it. and if he can prove it is not stolen it won't matter.
 
If it was stolen and Find My iPhone was turned on ..... the original owner would be sending you messages asking you to return it if you find it.

When you set up the iPad as a new device with iTunes, nobody who previously owned it will be able to track you. If you set up Find My iPhone, you will do so using your own account information and the previous owner can not find you. People buy and sell iOS devices all the time and, once you restore and setup with iTunes, it's yours!
 
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