“Mission Impossible” Thieves Steal 20 Apple Computers

Nicole Martinelli ()

“Mission Impossible” Thieves Steal 20 Apple Computers

Pulling a stunt worthy of Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible,”  thieves cut a hole in the roof of a Best Buy then dropped down 16-feet to snatch up 20 Apple laptops. Then they climbed back up, escaping with $26,000 of merchandise without ever touching the floor.

Touching ground would have set off the store’s burglar alarm. And the two or three person crew were too clever to get caught on tape: they cut the roof hole in a spot where security cameras are blocked by ad  banners.

The cinematic caper took place in South Brunswick, New Jersey leaving police to marvel at their handiwork:

“(This was a) high level of sophistication,” said Detective James Ryan, a police department spokesman told NJ.com “They never set off any motion sensors. They never touched the floor. They rappelled in and rappelled out.”

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Via NJ.com

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About the author

nicole_martinelli

Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco native who has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. You can find her on Twitter , Facebook and Google+.

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Posted in Cult of Mac, News, Top stories |

  • steve Bergman

    Too bad they probably don’t know that the cpu and mac addresses are traceable.

  • http://www.toxicspark.com Andrew Macdonald

    Although this is clearly against the law, and i don’t advocate breaking the law, I have a certain amount of admiration for these types of “heists”.

    They clearly did their homework, and managed to get away with the merchandise. Good luck to them.

  • Nathan

    I’ve always hated how almost every job I had, had ad banners that would block items. And I’m sure they realize these things are traceable – they are very likely going to sell these computers to someone who doesn’t know (but should probably assume) that they were stolen.

  • mark

    Wow what an effort for still getting caught in the end. That is going to happen to the thieves as Apples can be found as soon as they hit online.

  • Brent

    How come they didn’t take any Dell or HP laptops? Only Macs? Maybe Apple should change their slogan from “Get A Mac” to “Steal A Mac”

  • Charli

    “Son of a B—-, these dang Macs don’t have blu-ray. You idiots. Now how are we gonna watch the movies we got last month from Walmart.”

    “We can still look up por– Hey what’s that little green light there on the top for?”

  • so

    Wow, those guys specifically picked Apple laptops despite a plethora of wintel portable devices available for the take. Microsoft, eat your heart out!

  • Stanely Tibbits

    How do you rappell out? Seeing as rappelling is a controlled descent down a rope, seems hard to do a controlled descent up a rope. I’m not sure the detectives will catch these guys if they’re looking for people who rappelled out. I’m no detective but looking for people who bought ascenders might be a good start…

  • kt

    Kudos to the thieves for their good tastes!

  • Peter South

    I wouldn’t be so confident that these guys will get caught. There’s gotta be a way to disable or swap out parts. You telling me they were smart enough to pull this off but never thought about trace? Not likely my fair weather friends, not likely.

  • Will

    Another case of Life imitating Art????

    It is very interesting that these criminals passed up all the Micr*cr*p for the Macs.

    I guess if you can’t infect them, might as well steal them.

  • Craig

    @Stanely Tibbits

    Antigravity, of course.

  • iphonerulez

    I’m surprised those thieves didn’t try to steal some of those wonderful Windows PC netbooks or at least some quad-core Windows notebooks. I hear those notebooks are much better than what Apple has to offer. Apple computers don’t even have support of Blu-Ray. Why would thieves merely go after overpriced computers when they could get more features for half the price?

  • http://parkablogs.com Parka

    I’m surprised that people say that the computers are traceable. They aren’t really.

    Once those Macs reach the secondhand market (via eBay or some other websites), they are lost forever, no longer able to be traced back to the thieves. I used to sell secondhand Macs.

  • http://parkablogs.com Parka

    Oh, and those stolen Macs are still serviceable by Apple if they are under warranty. And Apple won’t check if they are stolen because it’s not their responsibility to.

  • Optical

    Comment from windows-zealot friend here (i know, I know..): ‘Damn, even mac-thieves must do things all cumbersome and flashy and cool-looking. If I wanted to get some Dells, what’s wrong with a simple window-crash & grab, or a stick-em-up?’

  • Mike

    “Good luck to them.” ? huh? Whatever.

  • Krissy

    to: March 4th, 2010 at 2:31 pm,

    They probably stole Apples because they’re way too overpriced to purchase them. You can get 3 Wintel boxes for the same Apple box price.

  • http://www.zoombits.co.uk/ memory card reader

    Pulling a stunt worthy of Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible,” thieves cut a hole in the roof of a Best Buy then dropped down 16-feet to snatch up 20 Apple …
    Thieves Go All “Mission: Impossible” On NJ Best Buy, Walk Off With $26K In …The Consumerist (blog)
    Thieves pull off Hollywood-style

  • maxgorilla

    There is never any news of PCs being stolen. Even thieves are smart enough to stay away from a pile of steaming hot crap.