It’s on the internet, so it must be true
I can’t believe that this is happening in 2008. Apparently a hoaxer posted an ad on Craigslist and said that a homeowner was leaving the state, so all of his belonging are free for the taking. That prompted a few people to print out the ad that became their license to steal. When the houseowner came home to find that strangers were taking his stuff for free, he confronted them only to be shown the printed ad.
It all started when a couple stole two horse saddles and other items days earlier when they visited the house to check out its room for rent. So how to cover their tracks? They had a crazy idea of getting other people to steal stuffs from the same house by posting an ad on the internet.
And as crazy as it seems, it worked. People responded to the ad and started taking things which they thought were meant to be given away.
The good news is, the police has tracked down and arrested the thieves masterminding the whole episode. Bad news is, apart from not finding the other stuff, what can stop this from happening again? This is the second time that it happened in the US, first time was in April last year. Hmmmm.
Anyway I can’t find the original craigslist ad so I don’t know what made it convincing enough.
News links : Man finds house ransacked after Craigslist hoax
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:23 am
I think this would work on newspapers too, perhaps it’s just a matter of time before this trick is played out on Daily Express classifieds?
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
The case is strange…Hope the thieves would be sent to the present to pay what he has done.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Was anyone at the house when the people who saw the ad came to get free stuff? Who would go into a house and start taking things with no one there? All of those people should’ve known better.