Stolen MacBook Nets Drug Dealers

Leander Kahney ()

petter_roisland

Photo: Alf Ove Hansen/Dagbladet.no

Nerdy Norwegian Petter Røisland helped police find a fugitive drug dealer, thanks to his stolen MacBook.

Røisland, a 23-year-old who lives near the southern Norwegian town of Stavanger, lost a computer in a burglary last year.

Determined not to get ripped off twice, Røisland installed Orbicle’s Undercover recovery software on two MacBooks he bought as replacement machines. And then in February, they too were stolen.

But when the thief first logged online (which, oddly, was two months later), the recovery software sent details of the thief’s IP address, as well as screenshots of what they were up to onscreen: Facebook profiles and MSN conversations, which Røisland used to identify the crooks. The software alos delivered a coup de grace — photos of the crooks taken with the built-in iSight camera.

At first, the Stavanger police weren’t much interested in recovering Røisland’s laptop until he sent them the webcam pictures. Turns out, the thief was a fugutive drug dealer the police had been hunting. Arrests followed and Røisland’s MacBook was returned — with all his data untouched.

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Note: Orbicle’s $50 Undercover software can also cleverly dim the screen in the hope the thief will take it in for repair, where it’ll show up as stolen (the company monitors network settings and claims to know if the machine is sold or taken to a repair shop).

Orbicle’s Recovery Stories page.

13 comments »

About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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Posted in Macintosh, News |

  • http://cruzthrucarwash.com Brian

    Orbicule Undercover just retrieved my iMac; I just got it back about two hours ago; w/ my data untouched. Undercover has now been installed on all the Macs in my company. Thanks again Orbicule!

    • http://cultofmac.com Leander Kahney

      Brian, good for you. What’s the story?

  • http://cruzthrucarwash.com Brian

    I had an iMac stolen from an off site location about a month ago; I replaced it w/ a new one w/ Undercover installed per Orbicules instructions, including activating a Guest account on my Leopard OS. After juggling a couple of other macs around, the one w/ the Undercover installed became my new workstation. Less then two days after being placed on my desk for the first time, my iMac was stolen, as well as one other in my office w/o Undercover installed. This happened on Thursday morning of last week, and after reporting it stolen to both Orbicule and my local police, I just went into wait mode.

    On Sunday afternoon, Orbicule emailed me the IP address using my iMac. I was out of town, but a person in the office that day called the police, gave them the IP, and then the police got a search warrant of the ISP the iMac was on, obtained the street address, and went and collected my iMac.

    The people that had my mac weren’t the crooks, but just some people who bought it from them for $150 USD (pretty good deal since I just paid aprox. $1300 incl. taxes for it). My mac made it back home to my office today. I can’t say the same about the other mac stolen w/o Undercover installed.

    I have since installed Undercover on all the macs in my company as well as bolted them all to desks to add a primary way to prevent them from being stolen.

    Overall though, Undercover is well worth the $50

    • http://cultofmac.com Leander Kahney

      Where do you live? I want to buy a brand new iMac for $150. How come no one offers me stolen goods? Any idea where/how they bought it?

  • Susan W

    A little late.

  • Brian

    Central California, and no idea where or how they bought it; the computer was stolen on Thursday, and it was connected to the internet at midnight Friday, so the crooks didn’t hold on to it for long.

  • http://www.ulagsm.ru YUU

    What an advertisement technique!
    Wow!

  • http://www.pausita.com.ar cristian

    Lucky he its in a good country. If this happends to me here in Argentina and a drug dealer get caught because of me, i dont want my picture public released… think about.

  • H. Harrison

    Any journalists out there bother checking their facts before they publish? This story is complete B.S. yet everyone believes it, one of the reasons it was posted on the company’s website and no actual reliable news outlet. I work for a news agency and we researched the story and found that too many facts did not add up and actually caught one of the folks we talked with contradicted themselves.

    • http://cultofmac.com Leander Kahney

      @H Harrison. Very interesting. Care to tell the story here? Or send me email: leander AT cultofmac.com. If it’s BS, we definitely want to update the post.

  • http://orbicule.com Peter Schols

    I’m Peter, president of Orbicule, the company that develops Undercover.
    I’m very surprised by the comment of H. Harrison, as I have been personally in touch with Petter Roisland, the victim of the theft mentioned in this story. I can assure you that the story is completely true, and is *not* a fake marketing trick. In addition, the story has been published in Norway’s largest newspaper.

    @H Harrison: I’d very murch appreciate if you could tell us exactly which facts are untrue, according to you.

    Leander, if you want, I can get you directly in touch with Petter Roisland, and with many other victims that got their Macs back thanks to Undercover.

    • http://cultofmac.com Leander Kahney

      Peter, sure send me an email with petter’s contacts and the cops, if you have it.

  • http://www.fmnorge.com Petter Røisland

    Hi,

    I’m Petter Røisland, which this case tells about. I have just given Leander the telephone number to my local Police Station, including the case number and the name of the two police officers who worked on this case. My story was first told by Norway’s second largest newspaper. One of their journalists was here in my house, so I also think they can confirm my story.

    Regards,
    Petter Røisland