Tag: theft

This is something you don’t see very often in Seoul:

Surveillance footage showing two elderly women allegedly stealing goods and electrical cords from moving boxes has set off a police investigation and online outrage.

The footage, taken on Friday in Seoul, shows the two women rummanging through boxes temporarily placed outside a building during a move, while moving company employees were busy with other boxes.

According to the online post from the victim, the boxes were temporarily placed outside a building in the process of moving to another building 10 minutes away.

The video footage shows the duo working together, one keeping lookout while the other stole the goods.

A neighbor who saw the women alerted one of the movers, and when the mover attempted to restrain them, they dropped the toilet paper rolls and paper cups they were carrying and ran away while the mover was on the phone talking to the owner.

The items stolen include wire cords, a tablet PC and camping equipment amounting to one million won ($769).

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

Hopefully this elderly man is now receiving the assistance he needs so he does not have to shoplift again:

Donations are pouring in for a financially struggling Korean War veteran who was caught stealing food. 

According to police and officials at the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs on Monday, more than 20 people have so far contacted them to ask about ways to help the man who is now in his late 80s. Some offered cash, while others sent food and other daily necessities.

They decided to lend a helping hand and joined in following the news that the veteran was being investigated for allegedly stealing several bottles of sesame oil, canned fish and other food products worth 83,000 won ($64) between April and May.

After being apprehended, he immediately apologized and said he did so because he did not have enough money to buy food, police explained.

After serving in the war, the veteran worked as a fisherman for 30 years. Reportedly, he has two children he has lost contact with, and his wife died some years ago.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Just another example of the breakdown of civil society in major U.S. cities:

This story about an Army National Guard officer who stole a tracked vehicle and went joyriding in Virginia continues to get weirder:

The Army National Guard officer accused of stealing an armored personnel carrier from Fort Pickett last June is scheduled to go on trial May 20.
But Joshua Yabut’s trial has been put on hold because the 30-year-old first lieutenant plans to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, according to WTVR. A new hearing in Nottoway County, Virginia, is set for July 2.
Yabut is accused of stealing the military vehicle and leading police on a more than 60-mile chase to Richmond, Virginia, while under the influence of drugs. He said he had permission to take the APC, but Virginia National Guard officials denied that in initial reports.

Army Times

Here is where it gets weirder:

Yabut’s case took another twist in January when he violated the terms of his bond and traveled to Iraq, somehow losing his ankle monitoring bracelet along the way.

He used his valid military ID to board a flight at Naval Station Norfolk before flying commercially from Charlotte, North Carolina, the rest of the way to Baghdad. He returned to Norfolk two days later, according to WTVR. His military ID is no longer valid and he was put back behind bars.

His ultimate destination was Iraq but here was his itinerary:

• Norfolk, Virginia to Jacksonville, Florida
• Jacksonville to Charlotte, North Carolina
• Charlotte to Toronto, Ontario
• Toronto to Keflavik, Iceland
• Iceland to Berlin, Germany
• Berlin to Istanbul, Turkey
• Istanbul to Iraq on Jan. 26.

You can read more at the link, about how he researched being a terrorist and building pressure cooker bombs.

North Korea’s Hidden Cobra operatives have been robbing banks through cyber attacks for years. One of their biggest heists was stealing $81 million from a bank in Bangladesh and even tried to steal $1 billion from the US Federal Reserve. According to the below report the Kim regime has stepped up their cyber attacks against global financial institutions due to sanctions:

US officials said last week that Washington believes the North Korean government has stepped up cyberattacks targeting financial institutions in a desperate bid to acquire cash, as international sanctions levied against Pyongyang have squeezed its economy. 
Kim and Trump’s meeting in Hanoi ended abruptly without a deal, as the two sides could not agree to a detailed plan exchanging sanctions relief for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
Trump said in a news conference after the meeting that North Korea insisted that Washington lift all sanctions. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho disputed that assessment in a early morning impromptu press conference just hours after Trump spoke. He said that Pyongyang only asked the Trump administration to remove the sanctions “that hamper the economy and the livelihood of our people.” 
Demers, the Justice Department official, said much of the hacking is motivated by North Korea’s desire for cash. 
“They just need money,” Demers said. “They need hard currency. That’s a good way to get it.”

CNN

You can read more at the link, but regardless of any future lifting of sanctions, I believe the cyber crime by North Korea will continue because of the plausible deniability the Internet provides their operatives.

Watch your money folks because Kim Jong-un wants to pick your pocket.

I wonder if major corporations in the US even consider the espionage risk of hiring Chinese nationals for sensitive positions?: 

A Chinese-American engineer faces charges of stealing valuable technology from General Electric, sneaking it out hidden in a picture of the sunset to take to China, the US Justice Department said. Xiaoqing Zheng, 56, a US citizen also believed to have Chinese nationality, was due to appear before a judge in Albany, New York on Thursday, a day after his arrest, according to federal prosecutors. Following a four-year investigation, the FBI arrested Xiaoqing Zheng after searching his home and finding, among other things, a handbook detailing “resources” Beijing would grant to individuals providing certain technologies. Zheng’s arrest comes as President Donald Trump intensifies the trade war with Beijing, largely over complaints the country steals US technology or obliges American companies to share know-how in exchange for doing business in China.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link.

I did not realize that oil theft was such a common crime in South Korea that the police regularly monitor the pipelines:

Police said Wednesday they have arrested two members of a six-man theft ring accused of having dug a 40-meter tunnel in South Korea’s central province of North Chungcheong for more than one month to pilfer oil from an underground pipeline.

The Iksan Police Station in southwestern South Korea also booked an accomplice and the owner of a gas station involved in the alleged distribution of stolen oil without physical detention.

The gang, including its leader surnamed Lee, met at a warehouse in the town of Okcheon in the province in March and began to dig the tunnel with shovels and hoes to access the supply pipeline of the state-run Daehan Oil Pipeline Corp.

After 45 days of digging, the thieves reached an underground oil pipeline and started to steal oil through a rubber hose they linked to the pipeline, according to the police. They loaded 10,000 to 20,000 liters of the stolen oil a day onto a truck remodeled into a tanker.

According to the police, the oil pilferers installed a CCTV near the tunnel to monitor for police crackdowns. In the last three months, they managed to steal 370,000 liters of oil worth 480 million won (about $423,300) from the pipeline.   [Korea Herald]

You can read the rest at the link.

I wonder if this guy was scammed into making some kind of large cash purchase of real estate by the group with the intent of robbing him?:

Six foreigners are on the run after stealing a bag of cash from Seoul Station earlier this month.

The bandits, from countries including Mexico and Colombia, stole 360 million won ($316,000) from a Korean man at a fast food restaurant at the train station in Jung-gu, on Aug. 2, according to Seoul Namdaemun Police on Monday.

Three men and three women were involved, of whom at least some had left Korea, police said.

They said the gang had waited for the victim at the station and followed him into the restaurant.

The man left his bag on a table and went to place an order with the cashier while a person with him kept an eye on the bag.

But gang members distracted him by dropping money on the floor. The others snatched the bag and fled.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

My favorite part of the below story is how one of the officers was accused of not completing their Anti-Terrorism Level-1 training.  Wearing a PT belt might be more effective at stopping the below stupidity than the AT Level-1 training:

Three married U.S. Marine officers have found themselves under investigation for a night in February that went off the rails in Bogotá, involving allegations they went drinking with some local women, were slipped illicit drugs, robbed of U.S. property and landed in a local hospital emergency room.

The men may have fallen prey to what is known as “burundanga poisoning,” according to a report on the investigation conducted by the Marine Corps Forces, South, a Southern Command subsidiary, and obtained by the Miami Herald.

The report recommended that Marine Col. Roger T. McDuffie, a Harrier pilot who serves as the chief of operations at the unit known as MARFORSOUTH; Maj. Andrew L. Mueller, described as a theater security cooperation planner; and Maj. Mauricio Saenz, exercise planner, face “appropriate administrative or judicial proceedings.”  [Miami Herald]

You can read the rest at the link, but these three ended up bringing the prostitutes back to their rooms at the hotel, while walking by other Marines at 4:30 in the morning mustering to get on a shuttle bus to the airport.  After getting to their rooms they were then robbed of their government phones and laptops among other personal possessions by the prostitutes.  To make this story even more incredible is that one of the officers actually used his government travel card to take out a cash advance to pay two of the prostitutes.

What were these guys thinking, that this was a Secret Service job interview?

It just seems that this is a pretty bold theft to try and pull off with little reward when they were trying to sell the HMMWVs for $10,000 a piece:

A U.S. soldier and six South Korean civilians have been accused of being part of a ring that stole three Humvees from a U.S. base in South Korea and tried to sell them, police said Thursday.

The soldier, identified only as a 47-year-old Korean-American man, allegedly conspired with the others to arrange for three Humvees to be stolen from the base in June and September of last year, police said.

The thefts were carried out by camouflaging the vehicles to appear as unused items, said Kim Dong Hwan, chief detective of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s international crime investigation unit.

“The soldier insists that he was not trying to steal the vehicles with the rest of the guys,” Kim told Stars and Stripes. “The Koreans kept denying what they did at first. But they’ve been saying lately that they attempted to sell the Humvees.”

Kim said it was the first time police have uncovered a ring trafficking in stolen Humvees in South Korea.

The suspects — who also included a civilian contractor working on the base, three junk dealers, a film-prop maker and an intermediary — have been booked without detention.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.