Thieves break through Gamestop wall with sledgehammer [update 1]

This sounds surprisingly well thought out.

In reference to the Florida Times Union article, they mention a store on Southside BLVD that actually got broken into 4 times over the course of a month, not twice.

Ironically there's a security guard that patrols the strip mall that is apparently worthless. Seeing how four total windows were destroyed on their watch, it makes you wonder how they can even take their pay checks with a straight face.

I have to agree with CJC. The fact that they actually thought to grab the security tapes not only shows that they knew they had (working) cameras... but they happened to know exactly where the tapes were held. Wreaks of inside job.

nobody heard the banging going on? don't that area myself

Someone with a name like, Ps3iskewlguys calling something gay is just..... well,,,,,, ummmm.... ironic?

The fact that the robbers took off with a bunch of 360's means that PS3 is popular to you guys? WOW!!!! Logic FTW!!!!

meant to say "don't know that area myself"

Ps3iskewlguys, we have seen some good trolls here on joystiq.com over the years... but honestly, you are not very good.

Honestly, it's pretty sad when kids these days don't even know how to troll properly.

Hey i wonder if they took the store kiosk of the ps3 or wii. Also if they still took resistince fall of man.

The hell with this I'm taking my XBox 360 back and buying a sledgehammer if it's that easy! Does someone know which cord to cut? The red or blue wire?

if you own a Wii or a PS3 or even an X360, i would keep your home/apartment/trailer as secure as possible. some theives stole my Wii system right from my apartment; i imagine jerks like these aren't just eyeing retail stores, but also people's residences.

"leading store manager Brad Kind to theorize the thieves "really wanted to get a PlayStation 3.""

The article you link to lists the Store Manager as "Mark King", not "Brad Kind".

~HotShotX

When I went up to my local Gamestop at 4AM Sunday to try and score a Wii for my borther, the manager was outside with the cops- the store had been robbed and they took the Wii's, 360's, and DS's. He didn't say PS3 but maybe he didn't have any...

I didn't mess around when I got my Wii, I had a knife in my pocket and I kept my hand on it all the way to my car.

In South Carolina this happens a good 3 to 4 times a year. GameStop - EBGames won't even fix the damage, they just kind of board it up. Glad my store has never had this problem.

Last night we have a lady call our store and told us that her son was followed by 4 men when he left our store with an Xbox 360. He said they sped off quickly to follow him to try and take his Xbox 360 from him.

This is getting ridiculous.

jeez...that's a lot of work to steal some consoles. people are getting desperate.

and what is with the people getting mugged for the PS3 and Wii. I'll just wait a while, when both the price goes down and the consoles can be found everywhere. I'm not going to risk my life to buy one.

This place is about 15 minutes from my house and one time when I worked at Gamestop I worked there for a day. It's basicly the only murder I've ever heard of that happened in my county.
http://www.geocities.com/darcytristessa/dr04.htm

"Just goes to show you that Sony's shortages are hurting the criminal element as well." Classic.

And people have been getting robbed and shot and stabbed for their systems for years now, it's just that the PS3 shortages make it all seem a bit more, well, sensational.

Yeah I had my wii stolen out of my house. The thieves were too stupid to steal the controllers as well. Still sucks though.

WEll if any of you waited out for a PS3 this year.......I will say that the average PS3 consumer .....at least to me was 100x shadier than the lines for XBOX360 last year....and the Wii a couple days later.

GTA did create a large base of the PS2 fan base....coincidence?? EHH? EHH?? Kidding....methinks anyone who doesn't have a job and is willing to sit in line for a week just to sell their PS3 (not the ones who actually wanted a PS3 to play) is not a gamer.....just a person with no job and no money.

This wasn't your average thief, but it's not likely that it could be an inside job either. The store needs power in order to even use the alarm system and security camera and it's likely that the only things that would be alarmed would be the entry points and the window. It's highly unlikely that the walls would be alarmed, and the security camera stuff's always in the back as well as the power box too, so they probably hammered a wall in the back to get to what they wanted. A lot of display boxes are also kept in the back and since they reported that a bunch of PS3 boxes were thrown about the store, they were probably display boxes. It's not very hard to see what the thieves were after... Let's just hope that they were dumb enough to not use gloves and leave their fingerprints all over the place.

... When you work in an EB Games long enough, you tend to notice a lot of things. >_>;

Why are so many people willing to rob, mug, and steal for video game consoles?

Jack Thompson has got it wrong- demand for the games cause violence, and it's not demand for violence from the games.

Plus, the people stealing these systems either aren't able to afford them or just don't want to shell out the money.

I say I only want a Wii if I can win one or get it for free; I won't steal it, though.

a lot of the lines for the consoles outside of big city were made up of Welfare trailer trash.The woman in front of me had an odore I can only describe as the smell of Death and wet dog.

This is most definitely a group of thieves, I'd say a group of no less than three and no more than 6. This is a reasonably thought out plan but probably only took a day to case and execute. Dekagreen is correct on most if not all suppositions of the crime. Though walls are not sensored, there are motion/ glassbreak sensors that are highly acute to the degree of detecting loud sounds and small items falling over. What probably happened is the thieves got lucky and managed to cut the phone lines, too. This would prevent the alarm call to the security company and allow a significant enough delay for escape and evasion by the thieves. Premesis recording systems are not hard to identify (there are only so many places you can place a VCR-type box with accompanying monitor). But honestly, if they were brazen enough to go through a wall to "work" in obscurity and cut power in advance, then they were most certainly smart enough to not take chances with their faces, fingerprints, and any other CSI-episode-inspired clues to be left behind.

When I did this stuff back in the day, sometimes all you had to do was check to see if the back door was unlocked (Video Game store employees are underpaid and not exactly security experts) otherwise you had 7 minutes at around to 2:00am (cops are looking for drunk drivers at bar close, this time may be different in your area) before a responder showed up.

I am an ex-thief, and do not endorse, support, recommend, etc... any of the behavior or action of the thieves and any derivative mischief of their crime or this posting. You play the odds long enough and you'll lose. Lawbreakers ALWAYS lose. Sooner or later you get caught and that's that.