David Krop, 41, from Miami Beach in Florida made the mistake of leaving his Toshiba Laptop and his Apple MacBook in his van and when he returned from his business meeting he found the window smashed and his laptops gone. Ok, so nothing surprising there then.
“It’s just a terrible feeling in the pit of your stomach,” Krop says according to the story in PC World. Yep I can well imagine.
Things were not looking good at all and the police didn’t make him feel any better either as they didn’t see much chance of ever getting any of the stolen laptops back.
Then Krop remembered he had installed a trial version of LogMeIn, some remote access software, on his Toshiba laptop and the story now starts to get really interesting.
When he eventually managed to remember his password to the software Krop logged in and discovered that whoever had his laptop right at that moment was surfing dodgy sites.
As Krop spied on his own laptop he was able to observe the unsuspecting user as he checked his email accounts, updated his profile on social networking sites and place ads on Craigslist.
“My eyes just lit up,” Krop says. “Just the fact he was online at that moment was amazing.”
“It was strange, but it was also an incredible feeling,” he says. “It’s like, here’s someone who breaks into my car and stole my computers and I’m breaking back into my computer.”
Krop gathered all the information he could, including screenshots, and a video recording.
“It was unbelievable…I was watching this guy for three hours. At this point, this guy’s got his Hotmail open, a chat box open, Craigslist open, and he’s downloading photos and videos [of nude women] as well.”
When the user started a video chat, Krop was even able to see the guy’s face.
In less than three hours, Krop knew the name, email address, home address and cell phone number of the person using his laptop and he had a video recording of the man himself.
“I think we’ll get those laptops back for you now,” the detective told Krop.
Turns out that the guy that Krop was watching wasn’t actually the thief, he had bought the stolen laptop earlier whilst in the barber’s shop when a random guy came in off the street and offered it to him.
Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up. Incredible story!
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