Another package was reportedly intercepted in Los Angeles County, making it the third most expensive laptop delivery stolen in Southern California in November.
This time, however, instead of sweeping it in front of the customer’s home – the thief went a few steps further.
“I ordered a laptop online and had it picked up in the store because I didn’t want it to get stolen,” the customer, Rick Markowitz, told KTLA’s Jennifer McGraw on Saturday. “And I said, ‘Hey, I’m here to pick up mine,’ and immediately they go, ‘Your laptop has already been taken, sir,’ and I was like, ‘What are you talking about? I’ve never been here to pick it up.'”
Markowitz now claims he’s out $4,000 after a fraudster took his computer from an Apple store in Sherman Oaks on Tuesday.
While at the store, Markowitz says he asked the staff if he had been robbed.
“They said, ‘Well, we don’t know if you were robbed or not, but we are saying that someone with an ID with your name came in and took the laptop.
Markowitz filed a police report and then, thinking of doing some research of his own, went online to see if this incident had happened to anyone recently.
In his search, he found a KTLA report from Nov. 28 about a thief who police believe posed as a customer, showed an ID to a delivery person, and then made off with someone else’s package — in two separate incidents.
“And I was like, wait, I’m the third instance of someone having a laptop that’s been intercepted and tracked down from Apple?” said Markowitz. “And mine was in the store, it’s crazy.”
Unlike the other two cases, photographic evidence was not immediately available for Markowitz’s case. However, the similarities between each of the three events raise concerns for citizens, as well as experts.
“Basically, this is identity theft,” says Randy Sutton, a retired police chief and crime prevention expert who believes these people were robbed.
“Creating a fake ID is a walk in the park, especially when dealing with professional people,” says Sutton.
He says that in these three cases, criminals may have hacked the victims’ mobile phones, obtaining tracking information and potentially creating an identity.
Police have not yet said if the incident is believed to be connected to two other incidents in Southern California.
To find out if your phone has been hacked, Sutton advises consumers to visit malwarefox.com, a website that he says lists “all the different methods used to compromise your information.”
And Markowitz, who thought he was doing everything right, is hoping to warn consumers.
“Now because of that, I have to beg and kick and scream at the top of the Apple ladder to give me money for a laptop that was never offered to me,” Markowitz said.
Sutton says that in these cases, credit card companies often pick up the slack, and often, customers are often charged back.
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