When the new Play Station 3 came out, people were going to great lengths to get a drive for themselves. People were camping out all night, pre-ordering, looking for deals online, absolutely anything. They would stop at nothing to get their hands on a PS3 game console. Some are known to resort to illegal means.
Take the case of two 19-year-old employees at a Gamestop in Elk Grove, a suburb of Sacramento, California. They seized four machines and later told management that armed robbers had broken in and taken them away. Of course they got caught, and now they face some serious charges: embezzlement, theft, conspiracy, and filing a false police report. Those turned out to be pretty expensive game consoles.
This is how it happened. The day before the launch of the PS3s, Gamestop employees called the police and said they had been held up at gunpoint and that the thieves made off with the four coveted game consoles. The police won’t divulge any particular details, but someone tipped them off that the robbery was some kind of conspiracy. Furthermore, there was evidence that did not match their stories, indicating that they had not planned things as well as they should have.
At first, the police suspected that the boys knew the masked gunmen. Later, they realized that there were never any masked gunmen and that the two had simply taken the machines. They were arrested within a few days, but that didn’t stop every game store in the metro area and even beyond from hiring extra security to keep tabs on things.
What happened to the machines? They were probably sold on eBay. No one really knows, and probably no one ever will. They disappeared instantly, and the perpetrators used the money to get out on bail.
This isn’t the only PS3 heist. Here are some of the other stories of desperate people taking the law into their own hands and risking their freedom and livelihood to get a free video game console:
-In Hawaii, a man in an SUV stopped, got out and hit a complete stranger with a baseball bat and demanded he hand over his PS3. The attack was unsuccessful, so the man got into his truck and fled.
-An 18-year-old in North Carolina stole two PS3s from another student, and when he confronted the police, he was shot and killed! According to official reports, the police also shot his dog.
-In December 2006, thieves stole 180 PS3s from a warehouse in Nakashi, Japan. The theft happened mid-morning at some point and will cost Sony more than $80,000. Japanese police are now investigating the theft and trying to determine if it could have been an inside job.
-After a woman in Florida got her new PS3, a man followed her and her brother home and pointed a gun at them, demanding they hand over the console. He did what any reasonable person would do: she gave it to him.
-Some inveterate thieves broke into a game store digging in the back and stole 13 consoles which turned out to be just display cases. When they realized they had ripped off a bunch of empty boxes, they went back and grabbed some XBox 360s.
In addition to these stories, there have been reports of muggings and robberies as people camped out to get their new PS3 drives. The PS3 is expensive and a bit hard to come by, but is it really worth the risk?