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Stolen M8 reappeared ....

lpig

New member
Good morning to the forum. :)

Just to say also in this forum that my dear M8, stolen near Venice more than one year ago, magically reappeared on sale in the ebay store of a valued german Leica Dealer.
I informed the seller, but M8 has already gone, sold to an happy (and probably unaware) customer, whose identity is protected by privacy.
As for the gentleman of Leica store the question is closed, but Police and Leica are obviously informed.

So, a message for the anonymous buyer: the camera is good, good shots!

Leica M8 chrome (s/n 3101428) with handgrip
Voigtlander 35mm 1.2 Nokton silver edition (s/n 9740281)

Regards
Marcello (Venice, Italy)

Here is my M8: :(

 
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GMB

Active member
I think the reason why the German dealer is not willing to disclose the name of the buyer may have to do more with his financial interest rather than with the protection of privacy.

Under German civil law, you cannot become the owner of a stolen good, even if you acquired it in good faith. Thus, as the owner of the camera, you could require the buyer to give it back to you. The buyer could then ask the dealer to reimburse the purchase price. The dealer could go back to the person who sold it to him and request reimbursement of the purchase price. However, most likely that option is a theoretical one because that person may have disappeared.

Admittedly, my knowledge of German civil law is a bit rusty (I know practice in a different area), but I am pretty confident that what I said here is still correct. I also think you may have a claim against the dealer to reveal the identity of the buyer.
 
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lpig

New member
Many thanks for your contribution!

This is, briefly, the full story:

1) My beloved M8 was stolen in Italy, during March 2013;
2) The camera was on sale on Ebay.de, in July 2014. The offer was retired by the seller (an important german dealer) before the end. As to the offer, the camera could be sent everywhere in the world, except Italy (!!!, very strange...);
3) I found the offer on the web (in Google cache), in August 2014. Both the seller, Ebay.de, Leica AG, IT Police, DE Police were informed immediatly.
4) The seller wrote me "we have bought the M8 during a photo stock exchange from a supplier present there and have resold them some time later with Ebay". As for him the identities of supplier and customer are both protected by privacy (!!!).
5) I asked to and important manager of Leica Camera "Why should I buy my next Leica in a Certified Leica Shop? I will have no more warranties of a garage sale....". He answered in a couple of minutes (many thanks Mr. S.D.!), and so a Leica representative went to the dealer's shop;
6) The dealer assured to Leica that he "tried to buy back the camera from their customer at full price", but the customer refused the offer, even though now well informed that the camera was stolen (!!! Incredible! A good camera but a crazy customer, I suppose...).
7) So I asked the german seller to pay me the same amount of money for the full property of the camera, including software, box and warranty and property certif-cate. This would have solved every problem and should avoid any concern about dealer's and customer integrity, but he refused to trade.

Buying/selling/trading stolen material is persecuted by law, in Italy, in Germany, everywhere. You cannot buy anything in "good faith" if you know that it is stolen. If you purchase a stolen good, you are not the rightful owner, it has to be returned to the rightful owner without compensation (or with compesation by your supplier, of course, and so on...).

I have now no other possibility than waiting help of German Police. :cry:
 

Ulfric Douglas

New member
I have now no other possibility than waiting help of German Police. :cry:
There are always other possibilities.

Anyway, give the cops a reasonable amount of time to do an investigation and report back to you their failure/apathy/disinterest ...

then do more stuff.

We're not talking about pennies here!
 

Glina

New member
Did you try using the Stolen Camera Finder - find your photos, find your camera ?

This website crawls the web looking for photos with your camera serial number embedded into the EXIF file.

It may be worth a shot to find the user. Perhaps he was actually never contacted by the shop who sold him/her your stolen camera.

If he refuses to cooperate, I guess you can still pass his details to the police.
 

Ken_R

New member
Stealing Leica gear is big business.

SEE THIS

AND THIS

I expect most stolen merchandise sales to be discreet person to person sales but to see a stolen camera come full circle and into a legit Leica dealer that is really appalling. Disgusting really.

Hope you get your money back.
 

rfaspen

New member
This is worrisome on many levels. I'm not convinced the "german dealer" is being honest. That alone makes me recoil. While many of us can survive a theft of this kind, it is not a victimless crime. I, for one, have had to work very, very hard to be able to purchase my Leica gear. The thought that one thoughtless and amoral individual could steal so many hours of my life in one shot makes me nauseous.

I very much hope to read about eventual justice here....and soon.
 

scott kirkpatrick

Well-known member
Do we all register our serial numbers with Leica? I'm not sure if I am up to date on that, or if it matters. Reading the list of lenses stolen from Red Dot made me go and check the serial number of a silver Summilux 50 that I purchased on E-Bay in June 2014. Mine was not the one stolen in London in May 2014, fortunately.

The web service that checks to see if a camera serial number appears in pictures shown on the web sounds valuable, if ambitious -- how much can they really check? But how could you scan the world for lenses by their serial numbers? And it is an interesting challenge to look for serial numbers of goods offered for sale, where you have to drill quite far down in a website to see that information. Of course it is just a Small Matter of Programming (SMOP).

scott
 

Zlatko Batistich

New member
I expect most stolen merchandise sales to be discreet person to person sales but to see a stolen camera come full circle and into a legit Leica dealer that is really appalling. Disgusting really.
As the dealer has apparently refused to do the right thing, the dealer should be identified in this thread.
 
V

Vivek

Guest
Suspicion confirmed!

Good luck to you and I hope you will at least get your money recovered.
 
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