Volume 2. No 1 Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis October 1993

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Computer Thieves Raiding West Coast Universities

Editor's Note: The following notice has been adapted from an article distributed over the Internet by Kip Hauch of Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington. You can contact him by electronic mail at hauch@cheme.washington.edu.

Indications are that a ring of professional computer thieves may be at work on university campuses on the West Coast, and perhaps elsewhere in the US.

During spring 1993, the University of Washington in Seattle was hit several times by a professional ring of computer thieves. In total, well over 150 offices were forcibly broken into, and over three dozen high-end Macintosh computers stolen.

The thieves took only the Macintosh computer CPU and mouse, leaving the keyboards and monitors behind. The thieves also carefully removed all Ethernet and other cards from the CPUs. Similar Macintosh thefts are being reported throughout the West Coast. Desktop units (IIci,vx, Centris, Quadra) and PowerBooks are favorite targets. And buildings with a high concentration of Macs in faculty offices are specially at risk -- the thieves have often passed up student computer labs to pillage dozens of individual faculty/staff offices with high-end machines.

If you have been a victim [after contacting the Police Department], you may wish to contact the following group to report the serial numbers of stolen items:

The Stolen Computer Registry
PO Box 1490
Madison Square Station
New York, NY 10159
Phone: (212) 777-1291
Fax (212) 777-1290

The registry is a nonprofit arm of the National Computer Exchange, a nationwide computer brokerage firm. This list is distributed and used by some (not all) computer resellers.