14 DAY TRIAL // It is well known that the IT industry has spawned a long line of antitrust lawsuits, patent-infringement court actions and other types of legal battles over the years. Such developments have been found to involve companies of all calibers, from the smallest component manufacturer to the bigger players, such as Intel, AMD and NVIDIA. People, however, should know that many more investigations and lawsuits arise as a result of small thefts and other felonies at the consumer level.
It is no mystery that thieves often take off with a person's electronics products, be they mobile PCs, cellphones or other things. In some strange cases, however, events will take such a strange turn that even the one whose property was stolen will go laugh it off in a bar. Something along these lines is what occurred to a youth living in Akron, Ohio.
A 19-year-old male and his friend were at the corner of West Exchange and Main streets at about 2 a.m, when they were approached by Robert J. Bumpus Jr., 51. Bumpus offered to sell them a laptop he was carrying. What occurred afterwards, however, was not a quick deal for the machine, but a short series of events whose outcome was the man ending up in prison. Apparently, similar to a scene from a comedy film, the one he was trying to sell the laptop to was the actual owner of the device.
The 19-year-old left his friend with Bumpus and went to check the car he had left unlocked on Exchange Street, to check if his laptop was still there, after noticing that that the one the man was selling looked familiar. Seeing that his was missing, he called 911. Sure enough, the officers came to the scene and determined the ownership of the device. Afterwards, they arrested Bumpus and booked him into the Summit County jail, charged with one felony count of receiving stolen property.
This goes to show that people should lock their cars and that thieves may want to change locations before selling their booty.