My friend's studio got robbed

H

Huy Vu

Veteran
Hi all, my friend's studio in Fremont, California was broken into on Saturday and quite a few things were taken. He has posted surveillance footage here and is offering a $10,000 reward for information that can lead to the arrests of these criminals. I'm sharing it in the hope that someone will recognize these thieves. Apparently these guys have hit several businesses in the area including a BlackMagic Design office. If you recognize the men in these video please get in touch with my friend Viet Mac at
Phone: 408.837.3777
Email: info@machouseproductions.com
 
Sorry to hear that man, that's awful.. best of luck in tracking them down. I feel like ordering a bunch of Tile trackers and hiding them in our equipment now just in case...
 
I have been through this myself and it just flat out sucks!

All you can do is keep positive and try to move forward.

I lost my Cooke SII/III lens set, Bartech, MB20II, Filter set, Dutch head, Weaver Steadman 3-Axis, IDX batteries/charger & more on an out of state commercial shoot.
The crowning jewel was my F35 smashed in the BBQ rib joint's parking lot, urinated on, and then they spray painted "scab" on the asphalt next to what was left of the camera.
 
David W. Jones said:
I have been through this myself and it just flat out sucks!

All you can do is keep positive and try to move forward.

I lost my Cooke SII/III lens set, Bartech, MB20II, Filter set, Dutch head, Weaver Steadman 3-Axis, IDX batteries/charger & more on an out of state commercial shoot.
The crowning jewel was my F35 smashed in the BBQ rib joint's parking lot, urinated on, and then they spray painted "scab" on the asphalt next to what was left of the camera.
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David....seriously...that is one of the worst I have heard. Man....so sorry to the both of you. There is a special place in hell for these types.
 
ReelWorksMedia said:
David....seriously...that is one of the worst I have heard. Man....so sorry to the both of you. There is a special place in hell for these types.
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We had finished day one of the shoot, and had setup for all of the hero food shots scheduled for the next day. Apparently a local production company lost the gig, and the brother of one of the crew who worked at this rib joint let them in after hours, but no surveillance video was available.
 
Good grief David, thats the worst incident I have ever heard off.
Karma will come around to these guys.

One of my friends in London finished a gig and loaded up his small van with his camera, light etc laptop.
he was persuaded to join the staff at the place he had been shooting for a friday evening drink (he would be on coke). he came out and his van had been raided, cleaned out.

The police gave him a crime number, he actually found his gear on ebay for sale, he told the cops. Nothing happened. Off the record the cops admitted ths seller was a know fence an dclaculated his income at approx £200,000 per yr dealing stolen good.
 
I remember a bunch of stories like that from reduser, happening in LA supposedly on locked down locations where multiple Reds were lifted with all the fixns. Theft is big business! In my case I think it was more a personal attack by another production company rather than straight out theft.
 
Ugh, Been there. Twice. The first time I was lucky enough to get my stuff back because the word had been put out there and someone spotted some of my gear.
Anyone seen Tile? ( https://www.thetileapp.com ) I've been thinking of getting some of these to hide inside the padding on my gear bags and maybe even inside some of my gear (you'd be surprised how often there's little spaces and voids inside stuff). If these guys can sell tiles for $20, how much do you think it would cost for companies like Canon and RED to build them in to their more expensive cameras?
 
David W. Jones said:
Looks like you have to be within 100 feet of the Tile for your phone to pick up the signal.
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The way it works is that it crowdsources the finding by using everyone who has the Tile app installed. Once a Tile is reported lost, anyone running the app in the background becomes a tracker. I wonder if there are enough people using it yet to make that very effective. I guess even without that crowd source working you could just pull into the pawn shop parking lots and see if you get any hits.
 
Basic WiFi range I guess, so yeah.
I'd be curious to see some real world tests on these systems. Urban, Suburban, see how hard it is to track down. I guess if the user base hits a critical mass where say more than 1 in 100 people are using it, I'd think you'd have a hard time hiding from it. It might not register immediately, but eventually you'd pass an enabled smartphone that would rat you out. Just like how you might not ever go to a Starbucks intentionally, but you will pass within 100' of one eventually.
I did see a demo of a competing tracker product where they tagged a bike and left it on the street to be taken. They managed to get it back after a few days.
 
Depends on what is being tracked, right? I mean, if someone steals a camera and throws it into a foil-lined bag so it's basically a faraday cage, nothing happens. At the other end, how practical is hiding tiles - if you have a gizmo that can locate a tile pretty precisely, then the bad guy/gal just removes the tile, and sticks it in a chewing gum wad thrown onto a random truck. Obviously, a pro thief will be hard to stop, so what about the opportunistic thief? If he grabs something with a tile in it, it's all about timing. If s/he then jumps into his car and drives off somewhere, he can get enough time to locate the tile in whatever item he's stolen and again, it's gone. Just curious about putting tiles to track and putting tiles to prevent theft or locate stolen items - probably not the same thing.
 
This stuff terrifies me. I'd love to see a breakdown of how well different insurance companies cover claims. I'm starting to average about one claim a year, and I'd hate to find out that an entire shoot day or pile of gear was exempted because of creative contract language or an oversight.
 
ProfessorU said:
This stuff terrifies me. I'd love to see a breakdown of how well different insurance companies cover claims. I'm starting to average about one claim a year, and I'd hate to find out that an entire shoot day or pile of gear was exempted because of creative contract language or an oversight.
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Whoa! How do you average 1/year???
 
OldCorpse said:
I mean, if someone steals a camera and throws it into a foil-lined bag so it's basically a faraday cage, nothing happens. At the other end, how practical is hiding tiles - if you have a gizmo that can locate a tile pretty precisely, then the bad guy/gal just removes the tile, and sticks it in a chewing gum wad thrown onto a random truck.
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The thief could also build a time machine and zap the gear back in time before it was stolen!
Clearly it's not a perfect solution, but most of the people who steal stuff are not criminal masterminds. Usually they're actually pretty stupid and thus committing crimes instead of working a proper job. If you hid the tiles well they'd have no idea they're there. You could put one inside the bag under the padding, or cut a tiny part of the stitching to slip one in. Bigger cameras usually have a few voids in them where you could put something like a Tile or other tracker. You could take apart the handle and stick one in the hollow part of that. Anyone stealing something with a Tile wouldn't know it's there by using the app, although they would then alert the system as to where it is.
I'm definitely not saying that these things are ideal, it's just an interesting thing I came across online. In the real world thieves are not getting away with stealing and selling your stuff because they're ultra careful brilliant criminals, they're getting away with it because the police have limited resources and other priorities. It's rare that the police will search out your stuff, and in a lot of places they won't even follow up on obvious leads like a Craigslist ad showing your exact stolen goods. If you can go to the police with proof of the exact location of your property you have a chance of getting it back. iPhone thieves are getting caught all the time through the Find my Phone feature, and not from a citywide dragnet or detective work.
 
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