Reply #34: Stupid Burglar Nabbed by Backup Program [View All]

[Demeter]

http://perens.com/works/articles/Burglar/

The following article was included in the email newsletter distributed to constituents by Berkeley City Council Member Susan Wengraf. It's signed by a Berkeley Police officer - Bruce

As you may already know, some auto burglars who prowl Northeast Berkeley are prolific; one auto burglar may burglarize several cars in one night. Apprehending one of these prolific individuals can obviously have an impact in reducing the number of auto burglaries in an area affected by property crime, like Northeast Berkeley. With that in mind, I thought you might be interested in hearing about an arrest our Property Crimes Detective Division made recently.

On May 5th, at about 6:00 p.m., one of our fellow community members parked his car near the corner of Hearst Avenue and Euclid Avenue. Unknowingly, he left his laptop bag on the back seat of his car. Sometime before 8:00 p.m., someone smashed the car window and stole the laptop from the rear seat. The victim reported the auto burglary but there were no significant investigative leads in the case. This is where the story gets really interesting. The victim had a back-up program installed on his laptop. The burglar proceeded to take photographs of himself with the computer's built-in camera; those photographs were eventually up-loaded to the internet based storage location. The victim discovered the photographs of the suspect and passed them along to Detective Sergeant Ed Spiller and Detective Earl Emelson. The Detectives recognized the suspect, named Vega, who had just been released from jail at the start of the year.

The Detectives closely examined the photographs and noticed that Vega appeared to be sitting in a motel room when he snapped the pictures with the computer's camera. Sgt. Spiller, theorizing that the victim's computer had accessed the internet thorough the motel's wireless internet system, began work to identify the I.P. address utilized by the victim's computer in hopes that it would lead them to the motel where Vega was staying. Not content to wait for the I.P. address information to become available, Sgt. Spiller's Detectives decided to expand their search to Oakland motels. While checking motels on MacArthur Blvd., Det. Emelson spotted Vega getting into a car in a motel parking lot. The Detectives stopped Vega and arrested him for possession of the stolen laptop. During the investigation, the Detectives located additional stolen property (from other auto burglaries) inside Vega's car and in his motel room. Vega's girlfriend, Maria Reynoso of Berkeley, was also arrested during the investigation at the motel.