Handbag Theft Scam

DebtHater

Ive seen similar scams with the theives using your Sat Nav to find your address.

They steal your Sat Nav from your parked car and most Sat Navs, like TomTom, let you set your home address. So they know where you live and the house is assumed empty as your car is parked away from your house, so they can rob your house uninterrupted

trisontana

More of the same on the net:-

http://crimealerts.org.uk/?p=706
So this time it's an unnamed "city store", not Bluewater.

trisontana

DebtHater wrote: »

Ive seen similar scams with the theives using your Sat Nav to find your address.

They steal your Sat Nav from your parked car and most Sat Navs, like TomTom, let you set your home address. So they know where you live and the house is assumed empty as your car is parked away from your house, so they can rob your house uninterrupted

What if the car is in the garage, or there are more than one person living in the house? And why bother with the sat-nav. Why not just walk down a street and look for potential empty houses.

Edit

Snopes already has this story in its database, and this also looks like an urban myth.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/intent/gps.asp

xxlaurissaxx

Trisontana - Dont believe my story, im not asking you too, but it did happen so its not made up. The sat nav is a well known scam too.
People are just warning others that these scams do happen and to be careful.

trisontana

xxlaurissaxx wrote: »

Trisontana - Dont believe my story, im not asking you too, but it did happen so its not made up. The sat nav is a well known scam too.
People are just warning others that these scams do happen and to be careful.

They are not "well known scams". They are well-known urban myths, as a glance at the Snopes site will tell you.

xxlaurissaxx

trisontana wrote: »

What if the car is in the garage, or there are more than one person living in the house? And why bother with the sat-nav. Why not just walk down a street and look for potential empty houses.

Then they wouldnt be able to break into the car on the street will they????:rotfl:

Thats probably the risk they take. If there is someone home, they wont go near and possibly wait for another chance. There are stories of burgulars breaking in while there are people home but didnt notice, and only realise when they are in, get startled like a rabbit in headlights and run off.

Or are they urban myths too????:rolleyes:

xxlaurissaxx

trisontana wrote: »

They are not "well known scams". They are well-known urban myths, as a glance at the Snopes site will tell you.

Do you believe everything you read online?????

twentypenceoff

the funniest and most unreal thing about the op post is that it says -

my sister's friend, let's call her Jude

why not just say, my sister's friend, with no name, or my sister's friend Jude (nobody knows what she was called anyway)

yorksrabbit

trisontana wrote: »

That's the problem with Snopes. If something like the above happens just once (sometimes years ago) then it's flagged up as "true", even when subsequent reports of the same "scam" are just urban myths.

The same thing happened to the PDS parcel scam. This did actually happen back in 2005 (but without the instant £15 phone charge) but the same old story gets trotted out each Christmas. When people then go on to Snopes, they see the magic word "true" without reading the rest of the article.

This is why I prefer Hoax-Slayer which will say something like "Was true, but the scam was shut down in late 2005." right at the top of the article.

trisontana: thanks for the reminder -- when I posted about this earlier, I said I always referred people to Hoaxbusters. Yeah. Great. Because of course, it's hoax-slayer.com.

I've conflated it with Scambusters, which USED to be OK (if very US-oriented) but isn't a match for Hoax-slayer nowadays. . . though its archive still has some historic gems:

Poisoned envelopes: http://www.scambusters.org/urban-legends/envelopes.html

Bananas will eat your body after wiping out Costa Rica monkey population:

http://www.scambusters.org/urban-legends/bananas.html

I've given up on Snopes: contributors and others to the site have complained that its format fails to make things clear (and its 'hoax background' stuff is pretty inadequate) but nothing's been done to improve matters.

That leaves only hoax-slayer as the clearest and most definitive.

I wish it was possible to have a sticky somewhere on MSE saying that before anyone posts any "alert" based on an experience allegedly undergone by a third party rather than directly by themselves, then they should first go to:

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

and perhaps save themselves some blushes and everyone else the hassle of validating the info.

trisontana

If your John Lewis story is true, what town did it happen in, was it reported to the police and, if so, what is the crime number.

As for the sat-nav story I don't recall seeing this crime reported in any newspapers or reported on TV. If it was that prevalent the police would be warning people not to put their address in to the instrument, just as they warn you not to leave the thing on show.

I would rather believe Snopes than something that is supposed to have happened to a friend of a friend etc.