Engagement ring stolen, sold to pawn shop - Legal question?

Emzycal

It was someone elses phone I used to call the shops, so I'm trying to get a copy of the records at the moment. Of course I wasn't planning on doing anything based on 'fairly certain'...I just meant that if I check the phone records and that was one of the places I phoned, could I do anything.

k12479, they have already entered into the problems by buying obviously stolen items.

Nicki, thank you for your helpful posts!

cbrown372, the officer in charge of the case checked his name etc. against various pawn shop records. We got it back just in the nick of time, it was about ready to be sold.

Dreamnine, definately.

I think people have the impression I want to sue them and get myself some cash. This is -not- the case. Though I will be trying to reclaim some of the cash value of the other missing goods from my Uncle, I do not want to take money from the shop - I simply want the shop to be investigated and brought to justice. If they are one of the shops I called (hopefully I'll find out soon, once I get copies of the phone records) then they knowingly held on to my engagement ring after me phoning them in tears. They knew it was stolen, they knew the owner was heartbroken - they kept it. And they were about to sell it or send it off to get melted down, whatever. If they hadn't known, fair enough. But when a shop is forewarned about an item being stolen and then the exact same item ends up being brought in (or was brought in before the phone call) and they decide not to bother contacting the police and instead to wait it out in the hopes of being able to sell it? They deserve whatever is coming to them.

Obviously my junkie Uncle is to blame and I've instructed the officers dealing with the case that I want them to press charges and do whatever is in their power to do, however I don't see why the shop shouldn't be held accountable for their own actions.

Haven't been on these forums in a while, I forgot how horrible some people can be - perhaps the reason I left in the first place.

k12479

It's not 'obviously stolen' to them just because someone calls up saying it is, especially if you know the potential customer by name. From some of the words you've used, e.g "in tears" & "heartbroken", it could also come across to them as a couple having a relationship breakdown - why should they interupt their course of business to take sides?

Was this ring particularly distinctive? If not it would seem to be typical pawn shop fare, are they supposed to turn down every anonymous-looking engagement ring on the basis of a random phone call?

In your first post you said you phoned the pawn shops "right after" you noticed it missing. At what point did you notify the Police?

Nicki

k12479 wrote: »

It's not 'obviously stolen' to them just because someone calls up saying it is, especially if you know the potential customer by name. From some of the words you've used, e.g "in tears" & "heartbroken", it could also come across to them as a couple having a relationship breakdown - why should they interupt their course of business to take sides?

Legally, they don't have to be sure that it is stolen to be committing an offence, just that it is likely to be from the circumstances. Which is why if you buy a mobile phone or car radio which turns out to be stolen from a total stranger for a fraction of its value in the pub, you can be prosecuted for handling stolen goods, as even though it "could" be his own phone or radio he is selling, the circumstances are such that most people would know it is very likely to have been stolen.

They don't have to turn down the pledge if they aren't sure who is telling the truth, they just have to ask the person offering it to provide some documentary proof of ownership, and if he can't do that, then they should turn it down, or be prepared to take the legal consequences if it turns out to be stolen after all.

How would you feel if you bought a secondhand engagement ring in a shop like this, and a couple of weeks later the police paid you a visit and removed it from your finger/your fiancee's finger to return it to its rightful owner? The pawn shop can't pass on legal title to purchasers if the ring is stolen, so that is what would happen to you if you were a customer of a shop like this. Would you still be happy with their standards of business if you knew that they had been told before they accepted the ring that it was stolen, but still accepted it and sold it on to you?

k12479

Nicki wrote: »

...if you buy a mobile phone or car radio...from a total stranger for a fraction of its value in the pub...

This, and your previous Mona Lisa/art heist example, are rather different to this case.

Nicki wrote: »

They don't have to turn down the pledge if they aren't sure who is telling the truth, they just have to ask the person offering it to provide some documentary proof of ownership...

So, turn down business on unconvincing phone calls?

He appears to have provided ID, so either:
a) it was his to sell
b) he's a very stupid thief <- this
c) there are personal issues involved <- and this

The item was recovered, so the pawn shop seems to have done whatever they needed to do. The fact that family members cannot live in the same house without thefts occuring however, is not the pawn shop's problem.

Emzycal

k12479, okay - not 'obviously' stolen then. But they had fair warning that any ring of that type handed in that day was 'potentially' the stolen ring they'd heard of and should have phoned the police to check, rather than taking it and not notifying anyone.

Also, they knew it was nothing to do with a relationship breakdown as I explained the situation and even told them who it was who was likely to come in to sell/pawn it. They also let my Uncle use multiple addresses and have been notified of him selling stolen goods before. The ring wasn't majorly distinctive, but even if it was typical of something they'd get in they still probably don't get so big a number in one day that they should neglect to follow up on tip offs of stolen goods.

The item was recovered because the police made the effort to find it, not because the pawn shop acted in the way they should. They gave no notification to the police that they'd been contacted about an item claimed stolen which they then (or had already) bought.

Also, I phoned the police as soon as I noticed it missing, but was not willing to wait for their recovery teams to start looking as I didn't want to risk my ring being melted down or sold before I could get it back, so decided to phone around to notify all the shops so that they could do the right thing and inform the police if they had the ring.

I don't think it's much to ask that shops act within the law and take two minutes out of their time to double check suspiciously pawned items. Put it this way, even without a phone call to warn them, if someone who looks like my Uncle goes into a shop trying to pawn a ring worth almost a grand, alarm bells should go off in someones head to start with. Especially when they bring it in without it's box or any paperwork proving ownership.