Rolex purchased from reputable shop reported stolen by Rolex

[Gebbeth]

Originally Posted by csaltphoto

Actually the only people who don't pay for the watch is the criminal who stole it. They rarely do any prison time for theft. No fine and no paying back victims. They get to keep the money. The victims and the rest of us pay for the criminals behavior. We pay for everything.

My only caveat to this is that in the criminal chain of custody, these watches are usually peddled, or laundered, at a steep discount to the FMV because to the robber, it was free to obtain, and he needs to get rid of it quickly. Any price you sell it would be pure profit (watch Goodfellas for this little bit of mafia economics), so you don't care that much about price elasticity.

So in some strange way, what the insurance company is offering the OP might actually be more than what the criminal actually obtained when he pawned off this stolen good.

But yes, the criminal faces minimal time, if at all, but it depends on whether the criminal ever gets caught, and if he does, is he caught just for that one stolen good (most likely not), or because he is part of an organization that does this, or is caught with multiple stolen items at once or over time (more likely).

If he's caught as part of an organization or caught with a large amount of stolen goods, yes, he will serve jail time, although probably not as long as you would want.

But how much time do you want him to spend? Surely you don't want to sentence him for life or execute him right?

I get it, it's frustrating, but with regard to public policy for crime and levels of crime, it's not as easy as you think.