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Comment by mutatio | Hacker News Reader

I'm British so I'm not fully equipped to understand in terms of the state law or effects on the ground, but isn't there plausible deniability for the aggregators that sell goods from individual shop lifters? If the retribution on the individual is negligible, why would they provide evidence against the folk exchanging money for stolen goods, there seems to be no motivating factor to do so.

You could increase punishment for folk buying the goods, but I'm not sure what negative ramifications that might have, e.g. you're second in chain buying a stolen phone.

Maybe I don't understand, but it all seems a bit bonkers to me.

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> isn't there plausible deniability for the aggregators that sell goods from individual shop lifters?

Quite right, and penetrating this "I dunno" defense is part of building a criminal case against the high-level traffickers. It's the job of the District Attorney (local), the Attorney General (state), and their teams of investigators; that is, the detectives. To do this they can surveil, pressure arrestees for lower-level crimes, penetrate organizations with undercover agents, and even tap phones and computers—pretty much anything you've seen in an American T.V. show, which is often dramatized but not always as far from the truth as you'd think.

> You could increase punishment for folk buying the goods

Do you mean the end-purchasers? Conceivably you could get some of the shopkeepers, if you can prove they knew the goods were suspect. But there's nothing criminal about buying household goods at a corner store—all the crime happened on the way there.

Yeah, I'm just posing what could be done if the law regarding low value theft is immutable, if it can't be changed, something else has to give (I haven't got a clue what).

> pressure arrestees for lower-level crimes

I guess this particular tactic isn’t an option if you don’t prosecute low level crimes like shoplifting.

> plausible deniability

For buying goods from random people instead of a distributor? No of course not. Any reasonable person would be suspicious.

Setup a second hand shop, selling "near-new" items, that'll give you 60-80% of RRP, problem solved.

The law doesn’t work like this. The police will simply ask you ‘where do you think all these second hand items are coming from?’ and if you can’t explain they’ll say that you aren’t taking reasonable care to find out.

"I think they are brought to me by legal owners who no longer need them"

But that doesn't pass a 'reasonable' test. A reasonable person would not believe that there is a huge supply of brand-new-condition second-hand goods.

May be.

But for criminal prosecution the fault should be proven beyond any reasonable doubt. IANAL, but proving beyond any reasonable doubt a person knew the item he's buying was stolen is more difficult than not.

My understanding is that they just have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you did not take enough care because that’s an offence by itself. You have a civic duty to think if something may have been stolen. They don’t have to prove what you were intending to do.

Is that correct? That is true for certain very specific types of crime like money laundering, where bankers are expected to prove to themselves that the source of funds is legitimate. I don't believe such requirements apply to literally everyone, as such supply chain investigations can be arbitrarily expensive.

I believe it's correct. They're not expecting normal people to do supply chain analysis, but they are expecting people who see a ton of second hand drug-store products in a bag in a dodgy warehouse run by someone who doesn't really seem like a drug-store distributor to say 'wait a second that might be not 100% legitimate'.

It's not an unusual concept in common law. It's like manslaughter - you can have had absolutely not intention whatsoever to kill or harm someone, but still be held responsible for their death because you weren't careful enough.

So you're saying the onus is on the buyer? Is it a special case for commercial outfits, or could it effect eBay buyers?

Yes there is a legal responsibility for the buyer to use some common sense to think about whether items are being supplied to them legally.

Yes and No. No, if one bought three Neiman Marcus shirts from such a source.

Yes, if one has bought many shirts, bags, laptops from these people; even in this case, prosecutors don't go after the fencers(middlemen) directly. They bust the small guys, who flip for plea deals. Then these 'thieves' wear the wire and sell stuff to these fencers; this is how prosecutors collect solid evidence to convict fencers.

Some pawn shop in Santa Clara did something like that. He got busted. https://patch.com/california/losgatos/san-jose-pawn-shop-own...

The widespread practice of scalping has boosted sites like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. While not a “random person” per se,[a] you don’t know if that good you’re buying isn’t stolen. Some scalpers, however, will show you the store receipt to prove it’s a genuine scalp(?), and to allow you to return it if it’s defective.

[a]: They are a person you don’t know, but it’s not like a flea market where you can’t read reviews before handing over the money

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