Video from the surveillance cameras. Burglar’s face might be seen in the first one. Evey of them carying in a bottle of beer, and carying out 2 laptops. Let us know if you can recognize them.
Even though, videos are from the other flat, we believe that burglaries are linked; hence, if someone know these guys, help us!
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Nothing very new happened in our investigation yet. Cameras in our house are yet unknown to be working or not. Police do not do a lot or definitely do not update us on their progress. However, today I have been given a chance to speak with Sampo bank prevention department. The lady, named Olga (if I am not mistaken) told a long story to me. She said that she has found the number of the ATM terminal in which trial to cash out was done, BUT she doesn’t know what that number means or which bank’s ATM it is. Furthermore, she cannot disclose that information to me, because third party is involved. Well, what can I tell: how come there are no problems of giving out that information when cash is taken out? Well, bla bla blu blu and no right answer. To say it in short answer to all the statements denying bank’s securing information policy where responded with “Bank is not giving such information to the clients. What shall I do? question followed. You have to ask police to write an formal request to disclose information and so on and so on. Well, we will try to do that, but before that I think I am calling Sampo bank and will try to use different story: On 25th of Saturday I have been completely drunk going around Riga and trying to take some cash out, I don’t know where I was and I want to track my location by the ATM machine I tried to take cash out. Maybe such story would work, and they could disclose information of where I have been. Sometimes I want to reject all my privacy rights, because now using my privacy rights, the bastards (a.k.a. burglars) are still unknown.
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They (?) Got Filmed.
To begin with, I should clarify the situation. During the same night (when the party at SSE Riga was held) another flat of our schoolmates was robbed. That flat is in Ganu street, which is 4 minutes away from our house. They have also lost two laptops and three mobile phones.
Luckily, that house has four security cameras. They have filmed four guys entering the yard at 3:26 A.M. and leaving it at 3:29 A.M. When they came in, they had just a bottle of beer per each. However, when they left, they were carrying two laptops and the same bottles of beer.
It seems that those guys knew the environment exactly and for them it took just 3 minutes to go upstairs, steal laptops & phones and walk away. They also knew about cameras and tried to hide their identities by turning their faces away from the cameras. However, one of them made a mistake and looked directly to the camera for a few seconds.
We believe that there might be a close connection between these two burglaries. Consequently, the filmed person may be also guilty for the burglary in our flat. As soon as we get a record of these 3 minutes we will post it here. Maybe anyone of you will be able to recognize a familiar face…
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Nemura: lost identity
A week before the accident I saw the latest movie about Jason Bourne, the Bourne Ultimatum. I even could not have thought about the possibility that I could get into a similar situation. By similar I mean not having an identity. After the burglary in which among other stuff I have also lost all my documents we were sitting and joking that I have to be careful and do not forget my real name. Fortunately, the bastards didn’t take our sense of humour.
On Monday, the first working day after the burglary, I was ready to take my identity back. I headed to the Lithuanian Embassy and a new unusual fact arose. The sign on the gates said that the embassy worked only till 12 A.M. However, the guard let us in and luckily the consul was still there. After some time I received a document called Repatriation Certificate which I have never seen before. This first step in getting my identity back costed me 5 LVL overall (3.5 LVL in the embassy and 1.5 LVL for the photos in a photo booth). Next step was to get back to Lithuania and get a passport as quickly as possible, i.e. in one working day. However, it wasn’t so easy as it sounded. Oficially to get a lost passport (oficially there is no difference between a stolen and a lost one) back in one day I had to justify that I need it quick. I was informed that I need to get some proof from the Latvian police about the stolen passport. So, as Vaidotas mentioned in his last post, we spent 4 hours on Wednesday (August 29) in the police (the sight there was terrible, it looked like Soviet Union didn’t completely abandon all fields of Latvian system) and finally got the needed proof. The same day I faxed it to Lithuania to get a fast translation. I also got a document that proves my full-time participation in the study programme. In addition, Diana Pauna, the pro-rector of our school, provided a document which says that I am needed back in the school as soon as possible.
With all those documents in my hands I went back to Lithuania. Next morning I got up at 6 A.M. and prepared to storm the migration office. Now I am very grateful to Mrs. Pauna, because the document that she prepared was the only having any value in the quest for my identity. The money paid for the translation of that police document was just thrown away. Firstly, the officer at the migration office seemed unwilling to help, but finally she confirmed that my passport will be prepared on Monday’s evening. I lost two (and probably even three) days of studies in SSE Riga, I will need some time to catch up, I have also spent a reasonable amount of money and faced a lot of stress when communicating with people working in unsound bureaucratic system.
Today, August 31, however ,still unsure about getting a new passport on time, I can tell you that the way to where I am now (just sitting and waiting) was really hard. Well, let’s hope good times are yet to come.
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Several days have passed since our first confrontation with our case investigator Mr. Vitalis Pogodins. Let me go through the story from the beginning till the end.
On monday (first working day after the burglary), we were trying to phone our way to our investigator, unfortunately, he never was there to answer the phone, while his colleagues told us to phone after 4pm (when according to the information we got later, the working day in the police station ends at 4pm). Not succeeding to get through on Monday, we didn’t give up on Tuesday and after several unfortunate tries, in the afternoon, we succeeded to talk with the investigator and arranged a call which would be followed by the meeting next day at 12:30. So on Wednesday we called our officer, confirmed the meeting and we headed to the central police station to meet our savior. However, some doubts arose immediately after the call as our officer asked how many of us coming, and we said that we are four, his response was: “why so many?”, what kind of question is that? However, we headed to the station with stupid thoughts and jokes of police, maybe, already having our things ready for recognition.
Everything changed, when we came to the station, cabinet #13 (another good sign!) we saw Vitalis Pogodins sitting there, it was all ok in the beginning, except for the fact that on the other computer in the office, there was some old arcade game paused, such sight made us doubtful about the quality of the investigation there. We were invited to have a seat in the room and we were starting to tell the story about the burglary to the officer, and correct all the mistakes made in the on-site report written by the patrols, who were in the flat. Suddenly the door opened and a female officer broke in (obviously, the one with old game running on her computer), starting to shout, immediately, about, why there are so many people in the cabinet(that’s where the question “why so many?” arose), getting us out and saying that only one person can be in the office at the time (only Vidmantas speaks normal Russian, why others would be unable to communicate with the police on one on one basis). We went out to wait in the corridor, while the latter officer tried to find anyone from the station to speak english, somehow, unsuccessfully; hence, the exception had to be made and we were let to come in in pairs. However, VItalis had some things to do outside, so he asked us to wait, and went out in the corridors.
The view we witnessed afterwards was probably the strangest of those I have ever seen in Latvia. Meeting his colleague (the same from the cabinet) down the corridor, a conflict somehow arose between them. We didn’t see who was the first to provocate the conflict, but we heard several Russian curses and then a hussle followed. Imagine a scene, where two criminal investgators, of which one is female other is male, fight in the corridor of the police station. Such scenes, though short ones, were completely innappropiate in this case, and our confidence in police dropped down to zero. However, we needed to communicate with the investigator further.
After the conflict, first thing we asked, was the certificate for Donatas and Vaidotas (me) to have a proof that my passport and Donatas’s all documents were stolen, so we could get new ones. Forcing him to write those, he made two certificates, in Latvian language (that’s more or less fair, still we could use Russian better), he wrote two files to the floppy disk (do you even remember them?) and went out to print them(I remember that computers were pretty new in the office, and probably connected to LAN or sth and, I think, only lack of knowledge how to use them gets the officers to such medieval means of transporting data as floppy disks, but whatever). We saw him with a bunch of papers standing at the end of the corridor and asked what is he doing, as he didn’t come to us. He shortly replied that stamps are needed and the chief is not here, so he is waiting. We invited him to continue working, while he will be able to get the stamps later, when the chief will come back, but he didn’t want to. We had to wait, too.
Our next goal of the meeting was to get an official request for information from banks, that they would disclose the information about the tries to cash out our cards (the exact ATM machines, maybe video tapes from the cameras). He left immediately after hearing that, and when came back he has completely forgotten what we have asked. Several times the same situation repeated or when asked about tracking the phone through its IMEI number, he said that it is impossible. After such useless trials to get him working, we were quite desperate.
Marius and Olga came, after some meeting they were in, to join our forces, fighting the bureaucratic monster of the station. Both in formal clothes, thus our investigator lost his mind, invited Marius to the office immediately. However, his intellectual abilities didn’t improve, and he forgot who Marius was just as he did with us after several moments. Reinforcement didn’t help so much, he was still forgetting everything, trying not to do any job. However, Donatas and Olga somehow managed to get an request for information for the Hansabank (I didn’t have enough time, they were closing at 4pm).
As a result, we have lost 4 hours, with result of 2 certificates about lost documents and one request for information. Inefficiency you would say? We agree. This was the worst way to spend our day and completely useless communication with person, who seems not to understand any of our concerns and problems. We will try to get new investigator for our case; however, knowing as police works in Eastern Europe, it is probably not going to work out. Our blog remains as the very last option we have, as the public investigation doesn’t seem to be working anyhow. We will have interrogations on Wednesday and Thursday so further developments will be published here. Maybe we will get some photos or recordings to upload here too. Let’s continue the investigation…
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The Burglary: Defining the Scene
Our flat is exceptional. We really got lucky when we found it. 2 minutes away from the school, 130 square meters, exciting design, the upper floor, spacious terrace with a magnificent view to the oldtown of Riga.
Unfortunatelly, it seems that the last advantage was disastrous for us. The most likely way how the burglar/s got into our flat is the roof. There is a firemen ladder leading to the top of our house.
After climbing the ladder most of problems were solved as the window/door of the terrace was not closed during that night.
As the burglar/s were not modest enough to take just that amount of belongings that they would be able to take away through the roof, they had to think about another way to escape. They chose the door of the flat and broke it from the inside. That was a much more convenient way to carry out a big suitcase with used underpants and two bags with laptops.
Currently such scenario of the burglary is considered as the most probable one. However, there are other versions and in the near future we will let you know about them.
Filed under: burglary | 3 Comments
As you probably have read before, during the burglary one mobile phone and two bank cards were stolen. We thought of those as the easiest trackable items stolen from us. However, officers on duty that night didn’t want to hear about them and said only that we need to block the cards, but they don’t need to register them as no cash from them was extracted(without even speaking about the possibility of tracking the cards, what was possible at that point of time and would have brought us positive results, there was 2 hour gap between the burglary and attempt to cash out the cards). Furthermore, according to police officer Vitalis Pogodins, who is our case investigator (we hope him to be changed, but that’s a topic for another post) tried to prove us that mobile phone IMEI number (which is phone identification number, seen everytime by the mobile service operator, when the phone is registered to the network) is completely useless as it is untrackable.
We did some investigation ourselves, though, and got to know, that the burglars, tried to access our bank cards (mine was Sampo bank Visa Electron debit card, while Donatas had Hansa Bank Visa Electron) at 5:00-5:30 on the very same morning. However, the one thing left to do when you are abroad and want to get help from your bank is to suicide, as they saw a lot of bureaucratic reasons not to disclose information we needed (main thing was that we need to write a note to the bank, or that we have to prove our identity, while Donatas has lost his completely). Even though, Sampo was a little bit more flexible in this case, they still were unable to tell us the exact ATM, where cash was tried to be taken out. Today we are going back to Lithuania, and we will give a short visits to our bank to see if they can help us now. Also Lithuanian mobile provider, Omnitel, will be granted a call or two to straighten out if they, or their partner in Latvia, would be able to help to locate the stolen phone.
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The burglary: Blogging starts
After long discussions with all the victims of this crime(we discussed whether disclosure of information, wouldn’t harm the investigation and help thieves to get away), we decided to proceed with the blog, as police investigation doesn’t seem to be promising and we have nothing more to lose. As mentioned before, the burglary, which took place on the 25th of August, four students’ belongings were stolen. The total capture consists three laptops (of which one was almost brand new, bought only in June), two photo cameras, mobile phone, ipod nano, two lithuanian passports, id card, driver’s license, car’s keys and documents, luggage, nike+ ipod holder, two backpacks, swatch watch, jeans, shorts and lots of small stuff, including underwear, etc. The burglars should have been quite happy with such affair; however, we hope that when so many things were stolen some evidence will be found to find the criminals.
Today we have also been to Latvian police station to meet the investigator of our case, and it definitely turned us down, so the mood has plummeted, and hopes are gone; however, such useless day spent in police and their work inefficiencies deserve another post.
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The flat is situated in the center of Riga, exact location is Alberta street 7-15: Lattitude 56°57′31.82″N; Longtitude: 24° 6′33.53″E, 5th (Google Earth it), the top floor, with an access to the terrace on the roof, even though we had some security concerns when we first moved in on 19th of August, we thought it would be just too risky to get in through the roof; however, the first week of living proved differently.
On Friday (24th August) we had a Welcome party in our school, and as a community is so friendly here, we decided to invite our friends and newcomers to our flat to pre-party. People started coming at 20:15 and kept coming till we had around 30 people partying in our flat, with music level quite high and flat adequately crowded. The pre-party ended at approximately 23:30, when everybody moved towards the school to continue partying there. The last person left at 00:30, locking the door behind him.
The first person came back at 03:30 finding doors broken from the inside and a lot of electronics missing as well as documents and even some clothes. Police was called right away with a hope of immediate actions and hope to catch the burglar; however, the actions were as follows:
- Writing several pages of protocols, all handwritten, and with no hurry
- Inviting an “expert” who sorted out that door was broken from inside, while it was noticed almost immediately after we realized to be robbed
- Sitting there for several hours without any actions and efforts to find the thief while his footsteps were still warm
You can already imagine that such actions were not sufficient to bring back our things and find the burglar. Probably, these are the main things what happened that night, and which unfortunately didn’t anyhow helped to sort the robbery out. Please wait for the crime scene scheme and photos, which will be uploaded as soon as we get any camera to take them. And some further advancements in this investigation are also expected tomorrow.
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Robbed in Latvia
Hello dear people,
Firstly, we guess, we should introduce ourselves. We are 5 lithuanians (aged from 19 to 21) living and studying in Riga, Latvia. Yesterday (25th August) between 00:30 and 03:30 A.M. (GMT +02:00) someone (and maybe not alone) broke into our rented flat and stole a lot of our belongings. We started this blog to utilize the breadth and strength of the Internet in pursuit of the people responsible for this misfortune. Due to the lack of confidence in the latvian police we try to take matters into our own hands. We will post all the advancements both in public and private investigation. We hope that transparency and publicity of this event will not only help us, but also could be a good example for future public investigations.
Currently we have 3 possible scenarios of the robbery and they will be posted as soon as possible.
P.S. Since both of our cameras were stolen, we are currently not able to provide you with a photo coverage of the crime scene. But we can ascertain you that they will follow.
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Recent Entries
- Private investigation: Watch the bastards
- Banks: How they do not want to help.
- They (?) Got Filmed.
- Nemura: lost identity
- The police: First meeting with officer Vitalis Pogodins. The fight. The incompetence.
- The Burglary: Defining the Scene
- Private Investigation: Bank cards, cellular phone
- The burglary: Blogging starts
- The burglary: Early morning of the 25th of August
- Robbed in Latvia
Categories
- absolute truth (1)
- burglary (7)
- police (1)
- privacy (1)
- private investigation (3)
