Laptop Thief In Photo Finish

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday May 13, 2008

Stephen Hutcheon

POLICE have arrested two men and recovered $5800 worth of stolen computers and electronic devices after the owner of one of the purloined laptops was able to connect remotely to her computer and photograph the thief.

Kait Duplaga, 19, returned to her home in New York State on April 27 to find the unit she shared with two flatmates had been ransacked.

Among the items missing from her White Plains home were two laptops, two televisions, two iPods, gaming consoles, DVDs and computer games, The Journal News reported.

Then last week, Ms Duplaga, who works at an Apple store, received a text message from a friend who had noticed she was back online congratulating her on recovering the missing laptop.

Ms Duplaga, who had not recovered the computer, realised someone was using her stolen Mac and had gone online.

She signed on to another Mac and activated "Back to My Mac", a feature that is available to people to subscribe to the .Mac service, which in Australia costs $140 a year. From there she was able to remotely activate the laptop's built-in webcam.

After a short while, a man sat down in front of her computer and Ms Duplaga used the remote control function to take a photo. By the time he realised what was going on it was too late to prevent the picture from being transmitted back to Ms Duplaga.

Then, another stroke of luck. One of Ms Duplaga's flatmates recognised the tattooed thief from the photograph.

The man in the photo turned out to be Ian Frias, a friend. Frias and his friend Edmon Shahikian had attended a party at the unit a few weeks earlier.

The next day, police arrested Frias, 20, and Shahikian, 23.

The pair were allowed bail and now face charges of burglary and possession of stolen property.

"It doesn't get much better than their bringing us a picture of the guy actually using the stolen property," Daniel Jackson, the deputy commissioner of public safety in the city of White Plains, told The New York Times. "It certainly made our job easier."

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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