The only problem with your story bootleg, is that legally he owns it if he bought it in good faith. It is up to Optotronics to get the money back from the guy who originally stole it. I know it seems messed up, but that's the way it is.
Seb
Hi Jaseth,
Perhaps that may be the way it is in Denmark, but my lawyer told me that as long as I can prove the item was stolen from us and the serial number matches, then it goe back to me.
I had the police report with the serial number listed as well as the documentation from the credit card company and the cards rightful owner.
Buying in good faith is nothing. If it's found out to be stolen, then it goes back to the rightful owner. For instance, just recently there was a scam going on in the USA where stolen cars were being sold to used car dealers. The way they were able to sell the stolen cars was that after the car was stolen, they would go to another state and find the same year, model and color of car in a shopping center or elsewhere and copy the VIN, they would then make a fake VIN emblem and VIN door labels using this copied VIN from another state.
They would then sell the car with faked VIN to a used car dealer and the dealer would then sell the car to someone who really did buy it in good faith. What ended up happening was that the FBI got involved and figured out what was going on. It was really sad when the FBI /law enforcement came to get the cars. The new owners were blown away that the car was no longer theirs and that it was going back to the rightful owner...in this case the insurance company that paid off the original owner on the theft. The bad part was that these were all fairly new cars with loans and the people who bought the cars in good faith still had a car loan they were still responsible for paying.
So no, just because you buy something in good faith, it does not give you the right to keep it if the item is stolen goods, it goes back to it's rightful owner that it was stolen from.
In the case of customer units that I have serial numbers on, if one of those ends up coming back to me, it will have a hold put on it until the origianl customer gives me a copy of the police report with serial number indicated in that report...
Anyway I'm glad I got it back, but I have a couple others from around the same time period that hopefully will pop up.
As a side note, pawn shops are supposed to get real proof of ID on anyone pawning items so that law enforcment can track them down when this kind of thing happens.
The person who sent me the stolen laser, was going to go back to the local police and pwnshop to track down the real thief. If the pawn shop doesn't keep good records and get real ID, then it can get hit with a charge of receiving stolen merchandise.
