Autistic brother stole mums jewellery and sold to post cash for gold

RadoJo

I can completely understand what you're saying and it must be very upsetting so please don't think I'm not sympathetic.

However, if your parents were unable to stop your brother from doing this, knowing that he has a limited understanding of the emotional (and financial) impact it would have and knowing that he has taken things before, then how could a company foresee this happening? Say, for example, they receive 100 envelopes a day - how many of them will have been sent in by someone in your brother's situation? I would guess that this is the kind of thing that probably happens once a year, if that, so expecting them to change their business model to accommodate such a rare occurrence is a little unreasonable.

From your point of view though, I can see why you want someone to blame - your brother clearly does not understand what he has done, so blaming him is pointless; your parents should probably have taken more care to ensure that he couldn't get to their possessions, but they have already suffered the loss of these items and feel terrible enough about that; you obviously had no idea what was going on until this all came to light, so cannot be held responsible. But at the same time, these businesses are not set up to protect people from themselves - they are there to make money and cannot realistically be expected to spend more time and money than is absolutely necessary on ensuring that such rare situations do not occur.

I think you need to try and be positive about this, rather than adding to your frustration by pursuing the company as I suspect this won't get you anywhere and will draw out the process of coming to terms with what's happened. Perhaps you could find something for your mum (cheap and cheerful - plenty of charity shops/second hand shops sell reasonably priced jewellery) which you can give her which would have sentimental value because you gave it to her at a difficult time. I know it doesn't bring back what she's lost, but it will give her something to smile about and make everyone feel a little better. You sound like a lovely son/daughter (sorry - not sure which!) and a caring brother/sister so I'm sure your parents appreciate your support even if you can't wave a magic wand and fix everything.

Violetta_2

This is a bit weird but I just googled Handling stolen goods and cash my gold came up as one of the sponsor links????
Aside from that I would think these companies have to take certain precautions to make sure they aren't handling stolen goods. It might be worth speaking to someone who might know more, could you speak to a solicitor, I often here that some do a free 30 min consultation.

wand3223

A couple of points.

A person cannot legally sell anything which they do not own.

With this in mind and based on the nature of cash for golds business i would imagine they would have some kind of system to ensure the goods they buy are legally available to buy. If not maybe they just havent had many legal challenges yet!

Whilst it would cause the legality of the brothers actions to be called in to question. Cash for gold could never have obtained legal ownership of the goods and could therefore be legally responsible for their return or replacement?

In terms of the brother, i would imagine it would be a consultation between medical professionals to establish whether he could be help culpable for his actions. In any case it would be unlikely to see any overly harsh punishment for a first offence, especially taking into account his Autism. I would think this would be well worth consulting a solicitor over if the property was worth thousands.

As you have said, if lots of random bits started turning up in the bags, such as coins - any company worth its salt should have robust procedures to investigate the validity of the vendors right to sell. Ignorance is not a defence when it comes to receiving stolen goods, a person must be able to state that they reasonably believed the goods to be legit.

Just my two penneth....

Errata

Although the brother would not be able to offer any proof that the items he wished to send were his, I would guess neither would his mother be able to do so.
This would apply to the majority of people who send items worth a few tens of pounds, even though the 'batch' they send may be made up of several dozen of these inexpensive items.

Mankysteve

fluffnutter wrote: »

There's just nothing in it for the companies, hon. I know you're upset for your mum, but profit-making organisations aren't going to lose money helping people out like this. There's simply no business reason to do so.

Agreed welcome to capitalism. There not really interested in where stuff came from. I bet at least half of the stuff in my local cash generator is stolen.

wand3223

Mankysteve wrote: »

Agreed welcome to capitalism. There not really interested in where stuff came from. I bet at least half of the stuff in my local cash generator is stolen.

Well that makes receiving stolen goods ok then...

The law is still the law, whether it is always enforced or not!

Capitalism has nothing to do with breaking or ignoring the law, it means a ownership of capital and land!

and its "they're" not "there".....always annoys me that one...

Fiddlestick

wand3223 wrote: »

A person cannot legally sell anything which they do not own.

Sure, but a buyer can still obtain legal title to the goods if they are acting in good faith and have a genuine belief that the goods were the seller's to sell.

It's quite a grey area though.

fluffnutter

wand3223 wrote: »

Well that makes receiving stolen goods ok then...

The law is still the law, whether it is always enforced or not!

Capitalism has nothing to do with breaking or ignoring the law, it means a ownership of capital and land!

Of course it doesn't make it OK to receive stolen goods. The point is that there's simply no business case in trying to establish the ownership of all goods that are passed to this kind of company to sell. How would you do it? How can someone prove they own something? It would get rather costly to try to authenticate every item. It's cheaper to not bother and take the risk that a small proportion of goods will be stolen. That's about maximising your profits. Which is part of the capitalist ethos.

CHR15

In amongst all these posts, the only thing I can't help but wonder... Is how much they offered him for a pound coin!

joeyboy

CHR15 wrote: »

In amongst all these posts, the only thing I can't help but wonder... Is how much they offered him for a pound coin!

2p? Good deal right there.:rotfl: