Thefts from Boats in Alton?

[brk-lnt]

Originally Posted by win-a-pea-socky

It appears that the pawn shop was enriched by $100 (or whatever profit they made on the sale) and the honest victims who bought it from them are $200 poorer. the pawn shop should return the $200 to the victim and just give up their profit of $100, or whatever. and then the pawn shop is only out $100, or whatever they paid the crook - it could have been even less. a $100 loss for a business compared to their total annual income hurts a lot less than a $200 loss to an individual compared to their total annual income - generally speaking.

and whatever happened to good customer service or the customer is always right? wouldn't it be worth a $100 expense to a business to get some good publicity out of doing the right thing and returning the money to the honest victim who did the right thing?

Interesting points, and with my comments I was partially playing devils advocate.

Overall, I'm not sure any common pawn shop is terribly concerned about their "public image".

I'm also not sure when/if the original victim gets their kayak back. If that is expected to happen in reasonable time, then it seems like the pawn shop doesn't really owe the victim anything. You could argue that they owe a refund to the person who unknowingly purchased the stolen kayak from the pawn shop.

IMO, much of this hinges on whether or not the pawn shop takes reasonable precautions in their business to ensure they are not buying stolen property. If they regularly engage in shady business, then they probably deserve to get a financial hit from this. If they operate as lawfully as reasonably possible, I don't think they are on the hook for anything.

What if the process looked like this:

(kayak stolen) thief sells kayak to pawnshop 1 for $100. Pawnshop 1 sells to pawnshop 2 for $150. Pawnshop 2 sells to innocent bystander for $200. Innocent bystander cleans up item and sells back to pawnshop 1 for $250 pawnshop 1 sells to new innocent bystander for $300. Kayak is finally realized to be stolen, and confiscated from buyer 2.

Who owes whom money (and what amount)? Yes, this is a purposefully complicated exercise meant to attempt to illustrate a point.