I recovered my stolen scope!Posted By Ralph Encarnacion |
As some of you know, one of my Telescopes was stolen last August from the front of my house. I had setup a Meade tripod, with a Gyro mount on it. The scope was a Celestron Ultima 2000 C8 OTA. On that I had a Televue Bino viewer with two new 24 Panoptics, a Rigel Quick Finder, and a Anteres 9x50 right angle finder. The scope had a Losmandy G11 dove tail rail on the top and a CG5 dove tail rail on the bottom. It also had a Virtual View Adapter, and a Lumicon 2" Diagonal. Someone must have been watching me because I went inside the house to get something, and when I came back out, the whole thing was gone. I was gone about a minute. I immediately called the Police department and all they did was take the report over the phone. I asked them if they would check the pawn shops and they said that since I did not have a serial number on anything, that they would not even bother to check with the pawn shops. So basically, I was screwed. I made a claim with my insurance, but told them to hold off for a while because I was going to check the pawn shops myself to see if anything would show up. Since I am a pawn shop junky, I have been checking every pawn shop in Austin once a week, for the last three months. I have also been checking Ebay everyday. Well on Thursday morning I checked Ebay and guess what I found. I found my Televue Binoviewers for sale along with the two 24 pans. He had a buy it know price of $1075 and a starting bid of $975. The reason I know they where mine is because he had left the 2" to 1.25" reducer from the diagonal attached to the bottom of the binoviewer. The adapter was mounted upside down by the way. I knew that was my adapter because the adapter had the chrome set screw changed out for a brass set screw that they sell at the local Astronomy store. So I knew they where mine. Plus the seller lived in Austin Texas. I called the police department again and told them the story and gave them my old case number and they gave me the detective's name that has been working hard on trying to find my stuff for the last three months. So I called the detective and left her a message on her recorder and told her to call me back, this was around 8:30 AM. Nobody ever called me back and I waited all day. So while I was waiting, I started doing my own investigation. I right clicked on the picture on Ebay, clicked on Properties, and saw that he had stored the pictures on his Austin Roadrunner web page. I went to that web page and saw that he had pictures of about 15 electric guitars, a bunch of cameras and lenses, all kinds of test equipment and a bunch of other stuff. Most of this stuff was listed on Ebay or was getting ready to be listed. Well I started searching the internet and by the end of the day I had the guy's name, address, and phone number. I called the detective back and left her another message that said that I had the guy's name address and phone number. I also told them that this guy looks like he is fencing stuff on Ebay for a pawn shop. I told her that all they had to do is go by there and pick up my stuff. I waited all day again and nobody ever called me back. The next morning, a different detective called me and the only question they had for me was how did I figure out where the guy lived. I told them I searched for it on the internet. They said that they would have somebody call me back. Well, nobody ever called me back. By this time I had a buddy of mine in Boston bid on the bino viewer on Ebay to stop the Buy It Now option, that way they would have to stay on Ebay for the next 5 days, that would buy me more time and he would not sell them right away. The next morning (yesterday) I checked his web page where he had all those pictures and he had added pictures of the rest of my stuff, so I knew he had it all and was getting ready to put it on Ebay. I had to take action, so I went to the local police substation and they are closed on weekends, so I went to the main police station downtown and they where open, but there was only two people there at the information desk. I told them they whole story and he didn't really know exactly what to do about it. After thinking about it for about 20 minutes (he never called anybody) he told me to go by the guy's house that had my stuff and then call 911 and they would send a police car out there to meet me. So I went by the guys apartment and waited in the parking lot. It was about 5 minutes away from the police station. I called 911 and had to explain my whole story again to the dispatcher. I told them that I was sitting in the guys parking lot and they needed to send somebody over because I was determined to get my stuff. The only thing they asked me was if I had a gun, which I said no. So I waited there in my car and 40 minutes later the cops finally showed up. I had to explain my story to the cops and by that time, the guy had come out of his house to see what was going on. The cop asked him if he had my stuff and they guy said he did have it, but he had a receipt from a pawn shop. I personally think that he knows somebody in the pawn shops and he is fencing the stuff that is stolen on Ebay. So when it was all set and done, the cops said that all they could do for now was confiscate the stuff and take it back to the police station. As they brought out the stuff, I had gave the police a notarized copy of all my stuff that was stolen and it was all there. He said that I will probably get my stuff back sooner or later, I just had to go through the system. I told them that was fine, because now my stuff can't be sold. So hopefully, the detective will finally go to that pawn shop and go through the records to see who was the guy that pawned all that stuff in the first place. If the Ebay guy is legit, he should get his money back from the pawn shop. The pawn shop better have a record of who hocked all that stuff or they got some explaining to do. The police said I did an excellent job doing the detective work and he has never had a call like that before. I told him that they better get to the bottom of it or I'll open up my investigation again.
Ralph
Ralph
1200 frames stacked in Registax. C11 and 2.5X Powermate.