A MacBook robbery was foiled after a security application from Orbicule took a photo of the robber as he opened the machine and even snapped some pics of him chatting on Facebook explaining to his friend how he was planning on selling the stolen device, Ann Arbor reports (via Cult of Mac).
Ann Arbor writes:
The laptop was stolen sometime before 2:45 a.m. Sunday from a home in the 500 block of Elm Street when two 21-year-old Ann Arbor men returned from a night out and discovered their rooms had been broken into, said Ann Arbor police Lt. Renee Bush. Among the stolen items were baseball hats, video games, checks, office equipment and a backpack with a laptop computer inside of it, Bush said.
That laptop had anti-theft software that takes a picture of the user every time it’s turned on, Bush said. When the suspect — expected to be arraigned on charges Monday afternoon — powered up the computer, the software took his picture and sent it to a website, allowing the owner to provide it to police, Bush said.
It was Logan Chadde’s computer that was stolen and the $40 Orbicule software that managed to result in the arrest.
Chadde said once the man logged online to a “Guest” account on the laptop, he received an email that contained a picture of the man, a screenshot of what he was doing on the computer and the laptop’s location. He said the software actually took a screen shot of the man Facebook chatting to another person about how he was going to sell the stolen laptop.
It’s often difficult to find the culprit in these cases, however if you take preventative measures with software like Find My Mac or Orbicule’s Undercover, you’ll stand a much better chance, as this shows.
A number of stories like this have been cropping up, including the idiot thief who decided to upload photos from a stolen iPhone on to the victim’s photo stream for everyone to see. Sometimes you don’t even need to take preventative measures, they are the products of their own downfall.
“It was an amazing screen shot to get at a perfect moment with him chatting those things,” Logan Chadde, the victim said. “I called the police and sent that to them and I had his full name.”
