Two days ago some creeps broke into Stephanie’s car while she was at work.  All they took was her purse, which was in her trunk, and only contained her cell phone, her keys to my car, and some makeup things.  Apparently three other cars were also broken into before someone happened to come outside to use a cell phone and saw someone jump into the back of a car while the driver sped away.

So we had the cell phone deactivated immediately, and fortunately they had made no calls (at all).  After Stephanie was on hold with the Charlotte police department for over half an hour, she decided to submit the crime report online.  We had already decided that we probably were not going to see anything from the purse again, so our biggest concern was that they had the keys to my car and they could have written down our address from our car registration that was in the glove compartment (which was open when Stephanie first went to her car).  So we took my car to my office (which has 24-hour surveillance) and they said it’d be okay to leave it there for the night.  At about 10:45 I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize, that only showed up as “Pineville, NC” in the caller ID.  On the other end was someone claiming to be a police officer, who said someone had been brought into custody for breaking into cars and he was trying to find out whose cell phone this was.  Now, I am familiar with social engineering, so my first thought was that this guy had a set of keys and wanted to find the car it went to.  So I decided that if he asked for my address I was going to tell him I’d call him back at the number listed in the phone book for the police department.

Well anyway he never asked for our address, but he asked us if we could come down to the Pineville police department, so we did (after checking Google to make sure the directions he gave really go to the police department).  Of course, this was a forty-minute drive, even at 11:30 on a weeknight with no traffic.

When we got there, they took us to a room where another couple was sitting, filling out a police report.  He said his car was broken into while he was at the gym, and they took his credit cards.  When he called to cancel the card, the lady said it had been used two minutes earlier to charge $800 worth of stuff at Macy’s.  So they called the police who called mall security and had the guys on tape, and they went and arrested them.  We told the officer we had filed a report with the Charlotte police, but after he spent a while on the phone with them, they couldn’t find any record of it.  Later we found out why: a report submitted online does not go right into the system, it needs to be processed and basically reentered by some human being who apparently works nine-to-five.  They said this could take 48-72 hours.  So we filled out a police report in Pineville and got our stuff back and got back home at like 1:15.

The other couple was there when the guys were brought in, the told us that they were three kids that were about 16 or 17 years old, and apparently go to high school in Huntersville.  Also, their mom came in and started saying how there was “no way that they could have done this.”  I’m sure they hear that a lot at the police station...

All things considered, it was pretty fortunate that they found the guys and that they still had our stuff, since most of the time that just isn’t the case.  All it will cost us is a $10 fee to reactivate the cell phone, and whatever it will cost to fix the keyhole that was severely violated.