Police become more vigilant online

File photo / NZ Herald

Facebook has become the new battleground in the fight to catch criminals buying and selling stolen goods.

Hawkes Bay Detective Sergeant Jason Crowe from the Hawke's Bay Law Enforcement Team said police had a good working and "well established" relationship with local dealers which had been built up over the last few years and their attention was now also closely fixed on pages and groups active on Facebook, where people buy and sell within online social circles.

"There's a massive market for stolen property because it's sold per fraction of it's real worth and real value," he said. "There are sites on Facebook that are used to sell goods legitimately and there's certainly a fair amount of stolen property that goes through those at times," he said.

There were a number of Facebook groups operating locally - and one in particular - in which stolen goods were believed to be passing through.

"It's set up with the best intentions as being a second hand property site, if you like, but there's certainly stolen property getting moved through it," he said.

While police had methods to monitor Facebook and social media for the buying and selling stolen goods, they were still being developed.

"Police have got a Facebook page and we regularly get information from that, that assists us. The thing is with Facebook, with respect to stolen property, is it moves very quickly as well.

"That is another area where people can end up finding their stolen property.

"It's something that we're looking at at the moment, it does have its difficulties in that Facebook is an American site. We monitor the site as much as resources allow, but it's something that we're going to have to review . . . how to best target it. It's quite a new thing."

Much like the perceptions regarding second hand dealers and scrap metal dealers, TradeMe is also seen as a place for criminals to offload their product. Mr Crowe said stolen goods do pop up on the site, however he believed more went through Facebook.

"A certain amount of property goes through TradeMe and we're often advising our complainants to keep an eye on TradeMe - and TradeMe are really good as well. They don't tolerate stolen property going through their site. Generally, I'd say more would go through Facebook. TradeMe is a New Zealand organisation and it's a lot more thought out."

TradeMe spokesman Jeff Hunkin said the organisation was committed to "nailing" any "bad apples" operating on its website.

"TradeMe is a really dumb place to do something dodgy as it's the country's most transparent marketplace, and deep footprints of electronic information are left behind. It's important to remember that 99.99 per cent of trades on TradeMe go through without any problems - and we believe most people are honest. However, as with any large community there will be a few bad apples, and we're no exception to that. We're committed to nailing these people and getting them off our site."

He said if someone thought an item listed on TradeMe was stolen, the owner of the goods should contact police as soon as possible and provide the auction number and any additional information that proves the item belongs to them.

"To help combat bad behaviour on the site we have a number of protections in place including transparent feedback, address verification and a SafeTrader escrow service. We also have some sophisticated tools under the hood that are aimed at detecting known scams or unusual activity, and a policing team here 24/7/365 to help our members.

"If someone sees any kind of dodgy behaviour on TradeMe our first suggestion is always to hit the 'Community Watch' button that is on every listing on site ... which will send a notification to our staff."

Ultimately, to stem the flow of stolen goods in whatever medium the sale occurred in, people needed to stop buying them, Mr Crowe said. "There's a hell of a lot of people out there buying stolen property and that's something that we want to know about - people that are buying it. If you know someone who is buying stolen property then call Crimestoppers so we can do something about it, because it is a really invasive sort of crime and if we haven't got receivers we haven't got burglars.

"It's sold for a fraction of the price and things that are targeted are easy-to-dispose-of- goods - things like flat-screen TVs and laptops and that sort of thing, a lot of them are stolen to order. That's quite common, people basically asking for an item and people who go out and steal it for them. That's what we're finding - a lot of our burglars are youth and again it comes back to that reporting of those who don't look right."