We were robbed....literally!

Hello GB Community,

I come to you now with a serious life matter. Last night, about 5 hours ago to be exact, my wife and I entered our Townhome to find that it had been broken into and we had been robbed. We are both safe and luckily have family in the next town over that we are staying with, but they managed to get 2 Macbook Pros, an IPad 3rd Gen, iPod Touch 4, tons of jewelry, a slew of DVDs and Blu-Rays, and most importantly to this community, my PS3 slim.

I'm not looking for pity or sympathy, but I am looking for anyone's related incidents to maybe put things into perspective. At this point, we feel violated, shaken up, depressed, and defeated.

Also, does anyone have any advice about recovering a stolen system in the event that it is replaced.

Thanks all!

Oh yeah, FUCK BURGLERS!

You should get a cardboard cutout of Batman in your house, to stop all the Robin

Ah Christ. Glad you've got a place to sleep, I know I wouldn't be able to sleep knowing just hours before some asshole was in there messing with my shit. I'm sure you contacted the authorities and stuff, though they'll probably be pretty useless. Just make sure you comply with them so that your insurance company takes your claim seriously. Hopefully you're the type of person who keeps a binder full of receipt scans in a firesafe somewhere (I know I'm sure as hell not, if my house ever burns down or is robbed, I'm fucked).

@GinjaAssassin: I'm really sorry for your loss. I've never been in this situation. Did you have any insurance on any of the items, have you contacted your neighbours, the police?

You should get a cardboard cutout of Batman in your house, to stop all the Robin

My solution to this problem has always been never leave the house hard to rob a duder who is home

@darkdragonmage99 said:

My solution to this problem has always been never leave the house hard to rob a duder who is home

You'd be surprised

If you have a data plan on the iPad you might be able to track it. The police should be able to tell you about it. Perhaps even the macbooks

TAKE PICTURES and make a list of everything that is missing right now while it is still fresh in your mind. You don't need to estimate value of your missing things right away, an inventory is whats important first off. This is crucial is you plan on filing an insurance claim. I'm assuming you've already called the police of course. If you have access to your financial documents, gather those up (deed/lease, insurance policy documentation, hell even your tax stuff if you have it, receipts for anything that was taken would be great if you have any). Call your insurance adjuster first thing in the morning and have all documentation available close by, including the police report.

Sorry this happened to you & your family, but the most important thing is that everyone is safe. Remember all that material crap can be replaced, loved ones cannot.

Some thoughts - Did you have the Find My iPhone/iPod app installed on your iOS devices? If so just use that to find the location of the items, tell the police and your problem should be solved. If you didn't do that then you are going to want to change the password on your App Store account. You should also think through the personal data that was stored on your Macs. If you had auto-sign in for example turned on for certain sites you are probably going to want to disable that and reset your password. If you had any documents on the computer with sensitive info you'll want to take steps to protect yourself from identity theft. Finally you are going to want to change your PSN account password. If you have PSN+ your save games have been saved to the cloud and you should be able to use them on any PS3 you want. If not then your saves are probably lost. As for any purchases you made on PSN, you can download those games again at no additional charge. The same goes with Steam games you might have had on your Mac. Again, you are going to want to change your Steam password if you have Steam. Hopefully though you set up the Find my iPhone App up which will let you get your stuff back pretty easily.

EDIT - Let this be a lesson to everyone. Always set up the Find my Phone app on your smartphone of choice. Not only will it let you find your phone when lost or stolen it will let you remotely lock the phone and delete all the data on it.

You can remotely de-activate your psn account at least and change your password from here http://www.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com/ca-en/home/

when you log in there and go to Account management, in the Account tab, Media and devices, you can deactivate your psn account.

Sorry this happened to you. What's important is that your wife and you were not harmed. I've never had a burglary happened to me but I can imagine it was horrible to find your own sanctuary had been broken into.

Fucked up man. Happened to me and it's a terrible feeling. At least you guys weren't there when it happened.

While nothing personal was stolen, I have been robbed at gunpoint, which is a different sort of violated feeling, but getting all of your expensive shit stolen really sucks all the same. I can't relate with you on that level, but I know it's still devastating.

I'm not sure I understand your wording on recovering a console, but if you're talking about your games, you can re-download them under Account Management --> Download history, or something along those lines. Your onboard saves are lost, though. Definitely change your password though, although I BELIEVE that the console prompts for a login if it gets connected to a new network. Better safe than sorry. As has been said, file a police report and an insurance claim with everything that was stolen.

Also, something for everyone. An interesting study was conducted a while back, and there was an over 50% reduction in burglaries if you put a security system sticker on the outside of your house (e.g., "Protected by Brinks" etc), even if there is no system in place.

I hope you and your wife can find peace and a sense of safety at this time, though I know how that may feel impossible. It's an incredibly stressful situation, to be sure, but it's important that you two try to take care of yourselves. Eat, sleep, and so forth. Reach out to your support networks too, as you already have. I hope everything works out for you.

Thank you all so much for the support and kind words, hearing it helps.

@DrPockets000 Funny thing is, there was a sticker on the door. Apparently it's been happening A LOT in and around our area (so says the frustrated police officer).

As far as the Find my iPod/iPad method....I hadn't set them up yet and literally was about to a few days ago on the iPad but then I got a phone call or something and didn't finish the process...and forgot about it later. Kicking myself now!

We do have good renters insurance and the recent (2011) laptop has full AppleCare coverage, so we might come out of this with our heads held higher than most.

@Daryl said:

You should get a cardboard cutout of Batman in your house, to stop all the Robin

HA!

This happened to my mates Xbox, he just recovered data and had his latest games on cloud saves so he still had his FIFA pro data which is like 100s of hours of progress, but that really sucks as crazy as it sounds just be thankful you werent in the house, because fancy Apple Products are really nothing at the end of the day, compared to be seriously injured or killed.

I'm terribly sorry for your losses, but like what others have said it's great that you and your wife are fine for the most part.

Question regarding renter's insurance: should one take pictures of everything they own that they feel is valuable in case of burglary or property damage? I don't save any receipts of any kind, so I was surprised to hear people mention saving receipts in a safe.

I'm ok you guys.

My house was broken into once, worst part was a broken door handle. Nothing was stolen weird enough. I brought my girlfriend at the time over. We walked in the house from another door. We were hanging out for about an hour until I went to the kitchen and noticed the door was busted. The way my house is set up, she would have to navigate the entire house from where she was at. I sent her a text to as not alert anyone that might still be in the house. I told her to stay in the room and lock the door, to not open it for anyone but me.

I called the police immediately, but I was quiet. I was more afraid of someone still being in the house, I didn't want to alert them that the police were on their way. I also notified the lady on the 911 line that I would be armed and to tell the cops to not shoot the first person they see with a gun. I grabbed my step dad's handgun, loaded it. Sent the girl another text, telling her I'm armed and to not pop out randomly and to put my desk in front of the bedroom door, for safety sakes. The desk wouldn't have stopped anyone, but it would've made a lot of goddamn noise. I never shot anyone yet at this time. Wasn't sure how I'd react. I went room to room, cleared the closets, under beds and such.

I heard odd noises upstairs, but never found anyone. My mind was probably playing tricks on me. Realistically, I didn't think someone was in the house. i just didn't want to risk the girl's safety on a 5 minute response time. I don't recommend anyone actually doing this, it was kinda dumb. Clearly, I actually have training in Urban Ops and room clearing. The cops arrived, I holstered the weapon and showed them my hands, telling them I was armed. I asked them if I could take out my weapon to unload and clear it, they were cool with it. The cops made their rounds through the house, didn't find anyone either. We got accountability of all the valuables.

-Invest in alarms or something. If you can't afford that, at least buy a $15 security sign to make people think you're protected.

-Buy a firearm that's at least 9mm, get trained with it and train everyone mature enough in the house to operate it.

@Rumpleforeskin said:

TAKE PICTURES and make a list of everything that is missing right now while it is still fresh in your mind. You don't need to estimate value of your missing things right away, an inventory is whats important first off. This is crucial is you plan on filing an insurance claim. I'm assuming you've already called the police of course. If you have access to your financial documents, gather those up (deed/lease, insurance policy documentation, hell even your tax stuff if you have it, receipts for anything that was taken would be great if you have any). Call your insurance adjuster first thing in the morning and have all documentation available close by, including the police report.

Sorry this happened to you & your family, but the most important thing is that everyone is safe. Remember all that material crap can be replaced, loved ones cannot.

Yes to everything by this guy. You will also want to monitor your credit card and bank transactions and possibly chaneg passwords on that if possible. In case he/she got some personal information to perpetrate a further identity theft. I am nit sure if you re renting your town house? Its always good to invest in a good alarm system as a step one. Then maybe evaluate your own safety habits, (1) is the door always locked (2) windows locked (3) do you know your neighbors?. The other thing that is important is to have a good spot for your important materials, jewelry cash, bonds, stocks etc. Invest in a good floor safe that's bolted to the floor in the bottom of a closet or something. Most robberies take place over a course of like 15 minutes so the harder it is for the bad guy / bad gal to get at your stuff the better.

When i was a kid somebody robbed our house and stole a bunch of my mom's jewelry and my copy of Mike Tyson's Punchout.

I'll chip in my two cents worth.

A couple months ago I was the victim of a mugging and assault only a block away from my apartment while on my way back from work (5:45 pm, broad daylight). The biggest tip I could give you is to not be afraid to seek counseling from a therapist/psychiatrist. Many police departments have victims counseling services that the officer should offer to put you in contact with. Some of the feelings you mention (i.e. feeling on edge and depression) are common symptoms of traumatic stress. Many people might want to write off someone breaking into your home as not such a big deal, but it is a traumatic event that robs you of your sense of security. It's common to feel paranoid, stressed out, and have trouble sleeping after a traumatic event like this, and talking to a counselor can be very helpful in working through all of that in a healthy manner.

Other than that, being proactive in assisting police officers with their investigation by reporting the crime, giving a statement, and providing a detailed description of what was stolen (keep track of serial #'s on your electronics people!) can be a cathartic experience. Trying to resume your normal routine also helps with getting over traumatic stress. Also watch out for "triggers" that bring on stress related to the break in. I don't know what your living arrangement is, so moving might not be an option if living in your current house/apartment causes you too much stress. All in all, be glad you are safe, take measures to improve your home security in the future, and get on with your life. Trauma can be dealt with. Don't let some bastards ruin your sense of security.

Sorry dude, hopefully you have insurance to recover your loss. Make sure you beef up your protection woth alarm systems and it might not hurt to get your neighbors and community involved with a neighborhood watch type program, depending on crime in the neighborhood.

Well, you've got all the serial numbers logged and put on your insurance, right? In terms of the PS3, you need to go and change your PSN password online or something, you back up your saves and stuff right?

@darkdragonmage99 said:

My solution to this problem has always been never leave the house hard to rob a duder who is home

I was at my aunt's house one time when a guy walked in and snatched her purse off the kitchen counter. My cousin was even chilling in the kitchen.

@darkdragonmage99 said:

My solution to this problem has always been never leave the house hard to rob a duder who is home

I got the scars to disprove that theory.

Getting pistol whipped fucking HURTS btw.

Been burglarized before and like you, they largely target electronics and DVDs. There's probably little hope of recovering your stolen electronics, even if you have photos of the serial numbers and all that.

Be prepared for your insurance premium to go up if you file a claim. I got paid pennies on the dollar for what was lost and would have been better off not filing a claim.

A close friend of mine went to London for uni (we live in Cornwall, where crime pretty much doesn't exist), one weekend he and his housemates decided to go to their respective homes to visit family. When the first of them got back to their place in London, they saw they'd been robbed, almost totally, including shit they really had no good reason to take. They also turned on taps etc. and let the place flood (yes, just like in Home Alone). My mate didn't have a place to stay in London anymore so had to dropout of uni and move back to Cornwall. Fucking sucked for him since as I take it, he was having a good time up there. So yeah, fuck burglars.

IDK about on apple, but when people call us to report stolen android phones we suggest an app called plan B. You buy it off the google app store and as long as you have your google account on your phone it remotely downloads it onto the phone and allows you to track it. I'm sure there must be an iphone equivalent. Also, if you have any friends on your PS3 get in contact with them and see if they cna play along and act like they didn't know the PS3 was stolen if they see your account come online.

Here is a video of a hacker getting his stolen mac back. Might give you some satisfaction in knowing that the bad guys don't always win hearing about someone getting their come up ins for doing what was done to you and at the very least is a funny watch.

So sorry to read this. :(

Robber came into my house once when I lived in Ireland. The house was 5 floors, we were sleeping on the 5th. The robber came in through the basement... took NOTHING and came all the way to the top floor. My dad woke up, decked him, pinned him down, cops came and arrested him :P. So... not the same experience.

I had my Dreamcast stolen out of my dorm room about 2 months after it came out. They left everything else, so I guess they had a gameplan to get in and out real fast. Well, they also stole the trash bin, which I assume they put the Dreamcast in so that they could walk through the lobby without drawing attention.

That's an effing bummer, man. Sorry to hear it.

I had the same thing happen to me about a year ago. Took my tv, xbox, most of my games, a random external hdd, and some other stuff. Not quite on the same scale as yours, but damn it sucks. For me, it was way more about just feeling violated. I knew I'd replace my shit eventually, but it's creepy as fuck to think about some stranger rummaging through your house.

I didn't get any of my stuff back unfortunately. Called the cops, local pawn shops, etc. to no avail. Luckily, I have an awesome group of friends that donated some money to help me replace most of it. (We play Rock Band here nearly every week so they were super bummed too) Ended up beefing up my security a bit and leaving more lights and shit on when I'm not home.

@Daryl said:

You should get a cardboard cutout of Batman in your house, to stop all the Robin

LMAO!!!!!!!

That sucks dude. My Uncle and his family got knocked over twice within a year, same deal as yours - all the small stuff that they could carry.

Luckily for you, this means that these guys aren't pros and are just looking for a quick fix, which usually means your stuff will show up around town sooner or later in pawn shops and such. Also, depending on your homeowner's insurance policy, you are probably covered by insurance for everything. Worse comes to worst, insurance will cover it and you'll get a nice check in the mail to buy back replacements for everything you've lost.

I'm glad everyone is safe!

leaving lights on when you're gone is a good idea, and also leaving a security sign in the front yard wouldn't hurt.

Sorry to hear about that, can't say that I can relate though.

The closest story I have is when my family was moving. We were immigrating to Canada and had hired a large truck to put all our boxes in, we were running a bit late and the movers had closed the truck. There were a few boxes that were missed and when my parents brought it up they movers said they couldn't open the truck until they got to the airport and we should leave the boxes up at the front. My dad just didn't have time to deal with it or for whatever reason didn't see how sketchy that sounded and let the dudes take the boxes up to the front. Needless to say those boxes never made it to us. I don't think we had very expensive stuff in it so it's not a huge deal but obviously loosing something with sentimental value isn't fun.

I can't really give any great advice either. When someone is intent on breaking into your home while you're not there then there's only so many things you can do before you get to the point where you're investing in security camera's and the like. I remember reading tips online about how you can hide important stuff in non-obvious places like having important jewelry in a cereal box on top of the fridge. Obviously you aren't going to do something like unplug and hide your PS3 every time you're not using it but at least you'd be minimizing potential damage. I remember reading another article about how you should leave some stuff out and in obvious hiding places. If a thief breaking into your house and finding nothing could be prodded into poking around more thoroughly compared to the thief that walks in and finds a hundred dollars and some jewellery.

@depecheload: Yeah and I have a dudes fingers to prove it's a bad idea to break into my house got to love having a few dogs with stranger issues.

Very sorry to hear that. It's good that you're all safe, but it must be very upsetting to know someone was in your house like that and it sounds like they got off with a huge amount of stuff. I hope you and your family come out of this okay.

UPDATE: (for those interested) I'm totally tracking my iPod Touch as we speak. Apparently, I must have turned on the location feature a long time ago and forgot. Wish I had known that the night it happened!!!!!! Anyway, I watched it sit in one location at 11% battery life, then before it died, I watched it travel a few houses down and now it is charging. Obviously, I called the police/detectives right away to let them know and last I heard they were trying to work something out. We shall see what comes of this. Either way, TECHNOLOGY IS FUCKING AMAZING!!!!!!!

Yep, I personally posted something relatable months back, accept for the fact that we were home, but luckily the person didn't manage to break in. If I find it, I'll post it, but I felt the same way. And now, and I'm sure forever, I'll be a lot more wary of things. Little sounds that never bothered me before in middle of the night can now make my fight or flight kick in somewhat. I'll look for it right now. I think it was all the way back in may. It seems like we're the only one in the neighborhood here that hasn't been broken into, but we were the only ones home during the middle of the night. The guy was looking in my parents bathroom window, but it was only one of my brothers, my mom, and I.

My mom was about to go to bed, and when she was in the bathroom she saw through the window a mans face really close to the window and she started screaming. I first thought "What is it, a spider?" And she then screamed "There's someone looking in the house! Someone's trying to break in!" I was playing F.E.A.R. so just from that it was a little bit intense; I jumped out of my seat, and proceeded into the hallway, the guy ran to the door in it seemed like less than ten seconds and he started bashing on it and twisting the knob back and forth quickly. My mom kept saying call the cops, call the cops; it was as if she was about to pass out, and then she herself quickly called the cops and they came. That's basically the long story short.

Weeks later, things have happened on and off. We heard someone kicked in a neighbor's door when they weren't home, and just across the street about a month later we heard a scream because another one of our neighbors came home to a broken window and her computer stolen. It was really too bad I wasn't outside. I was just in my room, so the person was no more than 40 feet away. Yeah, that crap really sucks. If you watch the news, and you ever hear about this kind of thing, the person that had their house broken into will say the same thing as you feel, and you've stated above. Alright, sorry if what I typed was jumbled.

Well, I can't find it through all the posts, but I pretty much know how you feel. It's too bad you had stuff stolen, but at least you weren't in harms way physically. I hope that the person that broke into all these peoples houses get caught. The thing is that it's so unexpected. We have alarms set up now and all that. We don't have guns, although the thought had crossed others minds. We have bats handy though. I don't like bragging, and to be realistic, I'm not saying I'd win in a fight no matter what, but I'm sure whoever it was I could take down.

I had my car stolen before. That kinda sucked. Especially because I found out just when I was going to drive to work...and there's no cellphone reception at my home. It was a long, miserable walk to reach a point that I could report the theft.

@GinjaAssassin said:

We do have good renters insurance and the recent (2011) laptop has full AppleCare coverage, so we might come out of this with our heads held higher than most.

I am very sorry to hear this happen to you, but it is good to hear you have renter's insurance. I run a property management company, and the number of times we've rented a home to someone who looks at us crazy for suggesting they get renter's insurance would probably surprise you. Especially considering how inexpensive it is compared to most other types of insurance.

Anyway, I hope everything works out in your favor, and glad to hear the only thing missing was material stuff that can be replaced - no injuries, no irreplaceable wedding album, etc.

@GinjaAssassin said:

UPDATE: (for those interested) I'm totally tracking my iPod Touch as we speak. Apparently, I must have turned on the location feature a long time ago and forgot. Wish I had known that the night it happened!!!!!! Anyway, I watched it sit in one location at 11% battery life, then before it died, I watched it travel a few houses down and now it is charging. Obviously, I called the police/detectives right away to let them know and last I heard they were trying to work something out. We shall see what comes of this. Either way, TECHNOLOGY IS FUCKING AMAZING!!!!!!!

Wow that is great news, hopefully they are able to track down some of your stuff this way. If they can get the IPad maybe one thing leads to another and Thief Bastard X rolls over on Crackhead Fucker Y that sold it to him, so on and so forth (no honor among thieves). Maybe that will lead to getting even more of your stuff back. Please keep us updated if you get the chance, I'd like to hear if this plays out in a relatively somewhat kinda better light for you.

Sounds like a bunch of Apple crap you should thank them

That really sucks :( If you have insurance on your stuff im sure it wont be a problem.

Duder that sucks...I send positive thoughts your way. I have only ever had an IPOD stolen from me

I'm so sorry that happened to you. While mom and I was in the middle of our move, we had some people in our house that bought some stuff that we couldn't take. Needless to say, they helped themselves to some valuable jewelry that my mother had, and never came back. She had a ruby ring, a 3 kt diamond necklace, the heart of the ocean diamond, a wedding band, a belt buckle ring, and many other pretty and priceless jewelry that were stolen from her. Just recently, I replaced the heart of the ocean diamond with a crystal one that looks similar to it, and I replaced a champagne diamond ring in place of another champagne diamond ring... which was very expensive and I didn't want to do that. I told her that I'm done replacing stuff, because we got to live comfortably now. She may have not recovered or replaced all she had, but she has enough now to keep her happy for a while. She's good to me and I'm good to her, but enough is enough you know. This robbery was back in June or July of this year, but we have to get over it (I already have, but she hasn't). When we die, we can't take it with us anyways... It's just stuff to keep us happy for a little while we are alive. Cannot stress over it because what we had taken from us is gone, but we'll never forget what happened. It's a valuable lesson to learn.

We can't report the robbery because we won't ever sell our house if we report one. You have a chance though, because you might be able to report the robbery to the police. If you cannot recover anything, then replace what you can little by little... and be sure to get insurance on the stuff inside your house next time... if your insurance or state allows it (I'm not sure it all goes). Take pictures and videos if you have to, just to prove that somethings taken. Also, get a security system. The service I have is $50 a month, and it's worth it as it scares people away (Especially when they see the security sign in the yard and stickers on all the windows and exits. We even have a sign next to our storage building outside!) Mom and I arm the system always when we are gone, and always at night. Also, get a couple of guns, because that's what's keeping my mom and I alive. Mom has shot a glock in front of our house, and scared the piss out of the neighbors, which is what it takes for people to leave us alone since we live in an unsafe neighborhood. Even if you live in a relatively safe neighborhood, anything can still happen. So get guns! That's all the advice I have for you. Good luck to you.

This thread may be of some help. Check out the pawn shops around where you live and tell them all the stuff you lost, if someone comes in and tries to sell the items you described they may be able to help, and even better if you can provide serial numbers. Good luck finding your stuff and stay safe duder.

So far the iPod tracking was kind of a bust. The cops went over to the identified location and claim to have interviewed/searched 3 houses but no luck. The problem with the Find my iPod tool is that the location spreads over about 15 houses in that area. It keeps popping up there every once in a while and when it does, I repeatedly click the "make noise" button over and over again for a while. If someone really wants my stuff and is too lazy/dumb to format it, I have no qualms about bugging the shit out of them.