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Burglars Targeting L.A. Apple Store Customers

by Caleb Johnson on January 9, 2010 at 10:02 AM

All you Mac addicts living in the greater Los Angeles area might want to watch your backs while visiting the local Apple Store. According to the Los Angeles Times, a group of burglars has been following customers from Apple Store locations and stealing computers from unattended cars. Surprisingly, these "follow-away" burglaries have occurred more than 100 times over the past year.

The Orange County district attorney's office charged three L.A. residents last month with burglary and grand theft in connection with 28 such cases. The Manhattan Beach police are still investigating 15 burglaries that happened last September. In all these cases, the criminals seem to wait for customers to leave a store, follow them (whether to another store or home), look for a computer left in the car, and -- if they find one -- grab it. Those commonalities have lead authorities to posit the existence of one large crime ring.

Despite the charges, no computers have been recovered by police. Manhattan Beach Police Sgt. Brian Brown told the LA Times, "It's a highly preventable crime if people don't leave computers in their cars." Genius, Sarge. [From: The Los Angeles Times]

Tags: apple, burglary, computer, crime, laptop, mac, police, stolen, thief, top

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