1/20/2009

TV Theft

Due to demand on the black market and the price of televisions they are still the most likely item to be stolen during a house burglary. This is even more apparent from a technique we have found thief's using to target people with large flat panel LCD TV and plasma TV's.

The method they are using is searching houses for sale on property websites such as rightmove, here they view the images of the properties looking for televisions to steal (take a quick look on rightmove and you will see what I mean with peoples flat panel TV's on display for everyone to see). Once they have found the target they either just look at the location on the map link, or phone the estate agents and ask which address it is.

It actually gets even easier for would be TV thief's than being able to see what flat panel TV's people have and where they are located as many adverts on the likes of rightmove also show floor plans letting them plan the TV theft with even more ease.

This happened to one of my neighbors who is selling his house a few months back, saying that the thief wasn't all that clever when stealing the LCD TV he had on his wall as they ripped his LCD TV off the wall bracket. The wall bracket snapped and they left a foot print on his wall where they was trying to get some leverage. We had a laugh about this as all they had to do was lift it up and it would have come off the bracket holding the LCD TV against the wall lol.

Unfortunately its hard to think of a way apart from asking the estate agent not to photograph your TV to protect yourself from being targeted in this way, if you are selling your house/flat as you do want to show your property in the best possible light. Also if you are being offered a seriously cheap LCD TV or any type of electrical goods that are unusually cheap you might want to think about where they have come from in the first place as there is unfortunately a large amount of stolen TV's currently on the market.

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