Geez, and I was pissed when a TSA agent in Washington relieved me of my expensive Hawaiian moisturizer/sunscreen because I forgot to repack it in a plastic bag and put it in my checked baggage.
Imagine being a news person on your way to cover some story, having to call your producer to say “The camera… the lenses… they weren’t in my bag when I picked it up at baggage claim.” Burn!
Then imagine a colleague finding your camera on eBay. Revenge is sweet.
Pythias started small, stealing cameras, laptop computers, gaming consoles and eventually moved on to the good stuff including a video camera belonging to CNN, and a $47,900 camera stored inside the bag of an HBO employee.
The items were sold on Ebay, and as you can see from his feedback listing, these were not cheap items.
His greed eventually came back to haunt him, when CNN found one of their cameras listed on Ebay. With a little help from the local police department and the USPS, Brown was apprehended.
When agents entered his house, they found 66 cameras, 31 laptop computers, jewelry, lenses, GPS devices and more.
The total value of the stolen items is well over $200,000, and if you have ever lost an expensive item when flying from Newark Liberty Airport, you’ll be thrilled to hear that the TSA is taking the matter “seriously”. News like this just reinforces the need to keep anything of value out of your checked bags.
Of course, this also makes me wonder just how on earth a TSA agent is able to leave the sterile area of his or her local airport with a $47,900 camera hidden in their bag. We passengers get screened, so perhaps it is time to start screening TSA staff when they enter and leave the airport?
Via BoingBoing.
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