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Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Insurer Covers HD House after Theft of $255,000 Worth of Gear
PLSN: In January of 2011, HD House experienced a rental company’s worst nightmare: a new customer, whom they fully vetted and researched, stole $255,000 worth of their equipment in a single day.
6 comments:
Sonia
said...
This sounds like something out of a movie. I mean I know these things happen in real life but because everything turned out ok for the HD House, its actually kind of funny. That a sophisticated company like HD House who has these intense guidelines and crazy hoops to jump through in order to rent form them, got swindled says a lot for the thief and their product. It really is too bad that this happened to them, but at least they had been smart enough to get a new policy earlier. I would say that there is hope for the law to actually get this thief, but with the fact that he had put so much work into fooling them in the first place, I really think his bases are covered and he wont be caught. However, it does make me wonder where he plans to unload all this merchandise, but like the fake heists on TV Im pretty sure he has a plan
Will this theft have a considerable impact on the rental industry? It seems as though the entertainment rental industry will need to invest in technology to fight the theft of equipment. This article shows that cyber crime such as the theft of the identity of the producer has broken into the physical realm. This shows that for a relatively low payoff compared to the possible jail sentence people were able to fool a reputable well-seasoned vendor. I could not find statistics on entertainment rental theft but with the increasing technology we will see a greater need for more network security and background checks moving forward. This also reflects the technology getting smaller and easier to transport while costing more, thus making it a more lucrative target. Some ideas were to GPS tag the equipment but those can be found and removed or jammed. With all of this you have to hope for the best in human nature.
It's a very interesting story that only reinforces the need for appropriate insurance coverage. Having formerly reputable companies suddenly become less reputable is an unfortunately frequent happening as companies start losing the ability to keep up with their bills, but something like what happened here where it's deliberate fraud is another story. As others have mentioned, is is like something out of a movie. Rental companies will usually do some degree of checking, even if it's just to make sure that the credit card will handle the cost of the equipment, but no matter how thorough the check there will always be a way around it.
While this whole incident was inconvenient, I think all parties concerned benefitted in the long run. HD House has been fully reimbursed for its losses, and Take1 seems to be getting some great free advertising in news articles. Like Luke, I also wonder what this means for the rental industry, and especially for the rental company/insurance company relationship. I hope that this happy-ending story will lead toward other, more positive relationships between renters and insurers.
This is really socking that someone would try to do this. A lot of the equipment that cost a lot of money have serial numbers in them and on them. So whenever they try to get this equipment serviced they will get caught. I know that in the current economy people are getting more and more desperate to get money so that their families can live and keep their house but this is just dumb. I am glad that the rental house had a good insurance policy and it covered the theft. It sucks that the person that stole the equipment was not covered by their insurance. I am sure that because this happened the rental house insurance premiums will be going up.
I would like to see a follow up to this in a few months. The number of people who can make use of this type of equipment has to be limited and hopefully people in the market for this type of gear would realize that it is "hot" when they buy it out of a the back of truck. However, these thieves seem sophisticated enough that I am sure they have a fake corporation that will allow them to sell the merchandise. It really looks like they had a perfect crime plan. This article suggests that the victims did everything expected of them to prevent the loss but the perpetrators were one step ahead of them. It makes me sad.
6 comments:
This sounds like something out of a movie. I mean I know these things happen in real life but because everything turned out ok for the HD House, its actually kind of funny. That a sophisticated company like HD House who has these intense guidelines and crazy hoops to jump through in order to rent form them, got swindled says a lot for the thief and their product. It really is too bad that this happened to them, but at least they had been smart enough to get a new policy earlier. I would say that there is hope for the law to actually get this thief, but with the fact that he had put so much work into fooling them in the first place, I really think his bases are covered and he wont be caught. However, it does make me wonder where he plans to unload all this merchandise, but like the fake heists on TV Im pretty sure he has a plan
Will this theft have a considerable impact on the rental industry? It seems as though the entertainment rental industry will need to invest in technology to fight the theft of equipment. This article shows that cyber crime such as the theft of the identity of the producer has broken into the physical realm. This shows that for a relatively low payoff compared to the possible jail sentence people were able to fool a reputable well-seasoned vendor. I could not find statistics on entertainment rental theft but with the increasing technology we will see a greater need for more network security and background checks moving forward. This also reflects the technology getting smaller and easier to transport while costing more, thus making it a more lucrative target. Some ideas were to GPS tag the equipment but those can be found and removed or jammed. With all of this you have to hope for the best in human nature.
It's a very interesting story that only reinforces the need for appropriate insurance coverage. Having formerly reputable companies suddenly become less reputable is an unfortunately frequent happening as companies start losing the ability to keep up with their bills, but something like what happened here where it's deliberate fraud is another story. As others have mentioned, is is like something out of a movie. Rental companies will usually do some degree of checking, even if it's just to make sure that the credit card will handle the cost of the equipment, but no matter how thorough the check there will always be a way around it.
While this whole incident was inconvenient, I think all parties concerned benefitted in the long run. HD House has been fully reimbursed for its losses, and Take1 seems to be getting some great free advertising in news articles. Like Luke, I also wonder what this means for the rental industry, and especially for the rental company/insurance company relationship. I hope that this happy-ending story will lead toward other, more positive relationships between renters and insurers.
This is really socking that someone would try to do this. A lot of the equipment that cost a lot of money have serial numbers in them and on them. So whenever they try to get this equipment serviced they will get caught. I know that in the current economy people are getting more and more desperate to get money so that their families can live and keep their house but this is just dumb. I am glad that the rental house had a good insurance policy and it covered the theft. It sucks that the person that stole the equipment was not covered by their insurance. I am sure that because this happened the rental house insurance premiums will be going up.
I would like to see a follow up to this in a few months. The number of people who can make use of this type of equipment has to be limited and hopefully people in the market for this type of gear would realize that it is "hot" when they buy it out of a the back of truck. However, these thieves seem sophisticated enough that I am sure they have a fake corporation that will allow them to sell the merchandise. It really looks like they had a perfect crime plan. This article suggests that the victims did everything expected of them to prevent the loss but the perpetrators were one step ahead of them. It makes me sad.
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