Ignoramus3242 wrote:
Suppose that you receive a parcel that you never expected. For example
a crotch rocket motorcycle engine. There is no return address. All
reasonable efforts to find the owner fail. No one contacts me in, say,
2 weeks.

Does this item become my property?

Would it be legal to throw it away in garbage?

Would it be legal to sell it on ebay?

Is there a registry of stolen motorcycle engines?

What if I sell it and a month later, an owner materializes. Do I owe
anything to the owner.

I am very leery of the idea of selling this motor on ebay. It looks
like plenty of stolen motorcycle stuff is sold there and I, with the
lame story of fedex leaving it in my driveway, would look like a
thief. If I do not mention that story at all, then people would ask
all kinds of pointed questions like "how did you end up with this
engine if you do not know anything about it".

i



I presume from your posts on this thread that it wasn't a hypothetical
question and this has actually happened to you.

If it were me, I'd just take it to the local police station, tell them
what happened and get a receipt for it from them.

That's what SWMBO did some years ago when she found a lady's wallet
outside of a shoe store with a couple of hundred bucks of cash in it and
no identification. The police told her that if no one claimed it in a
year they'd contact her and it would be hers to keep.

I skeptically told her "Fat chance of that happening, some cop's
sister-in-law will surely claim it before that happens."

I was wrong. About a year later the police called her up and said, "Come
get it." And all the money was still in it.

Things may be different where you live, but I personally think it's
better to live by the sign I have on my office wall reading, "There is
no right way to do the wrong thing.".

Jeff

P.S. A couple of years ago UPS rang my doorbell and asked to drop off a
carton addressed to the house next door, to which I agreed. The
neighbor's house had been unoccupied and on the market for over a year
and the name the package was addressed to wasn't that of my departed
neighbors TThe return address was a sporting goods store half way across
the country. I figured some teen-agers were using swiped credit card
numbers to buy stuff and have it shipped to houses they knew weren't
being lived in, hoping UPS would leave the packages at the door so they
could swing by at night and grab them. I hooked a call to my
ex-neighbors and got their permission to get involved.

I called the company who'd shipped the carton and found out my
suspicions were spot on, and that there was a few hundred bucks worth of
paintball gear in that carton. I told them I'd take it to our office and
they could have UPS issue a "pull tag" and pick it up from there, which
they did. I spotted two more shipments from two other merchants sitting
on the neighbor's doorstep and did the same with those.

JW

--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented."

Jeff Wisnia wrote:

P.S. A couple of years ago UPS rang my doorbell and asked to drop off a
carton addressed to the house next door, to which I agreed. The
neighbor's house had been unoccupied and on the market for over a year
and the name the package was addressed to wasn't that of my departed
neighbors TThe return address was a sporting goods store half way across
the country. I figured some teen-agers were using swiped credit card
numbers to buy stuff and have it shipped to houses they knew weren't
being lived in, hoping UPS would leave the packages at the door so they
could swing by at night and grab them. I hooked a call to my
ex-neighbors and got their permission to get involved.

I called the company who'd shipped the carton and found out my
suspicions were spot on, and that there was a few hundred bucks worth of
paintball gear in that carton. I told them I'd take it to our office and
they could have UPS issue a "pull tag" and pick it up from there, which
they did. I spotted two more shipments from two other merchants sitting
on the neighbor's doorstep and did the same with those.

Sound's like those kids have been reading the Anarchist Cookbook's file
on credit card fraud. I remember it circulating while I was at school:

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?...20Card%20Fraud

Chris

Ignoramus3242 wrote:

snipped



Well, that's the question, what is the wrong thing here.

IMHO, the "wrong thing" would be to adopt a "finders-keepers" attitude
about it, which is clearly NOT what you are doing, so PLEASE don't get
the idea I was castigating you when I used that quotation.

It's framed and hung on my office wall and I just smile and point to it
when something gets a little screwed up between us and a customer and
someone starts saying, "Let's keep quiet about it and hope they don't
notice, what they don't know won't hurt them."



P.S. A couple of years ago UPS rang my doorbell and asked to drop off a
carton addressed to the house next door, to which I agreed. The
neighbor's house had been unoccupied and on the market for over a year
and the name the package was addressed to wasn't that of my departed
neighbors TThe return address was a sporting goods store half way across
the country. I figured some teen-agers were using swiped credit card
numbers to buy stuff and have it shipped to houses they knew weren't
being lived in, hoping UPS would leave the packages at the door so they
could swing by at night and grab them. I hooked a call to my
ex-neighbors and got their permission to get involved.

I called the company who'd shipped the carton and found out my
suspicions were spot on, and that there was a few hundred bucks worth of
paintball gear in that carton. I told them I'd take it to our office and
they could have UPS issue a "pull tag" and pick it up from there, which
they did. I spotted two more shipments from two other merchants sitting
on the neighbor's doorstep and did the same with those.


I am curious, why did you not get the police involved.

As a matter of fact I did. I called a detective on our town's police
department whom I've known for about 20 years, told him about it and
what I'd done and faxed him all the paperwork I'd accumulated. I never
heard anything further about it and I expect that since the police don't
have unlimited resources they have to prioritize and use what they have
for more serious matters.

Sure, it would have been nice if that detective called me up and said,
"Leave the next package where UPS drops it, we're staking out the house
next to you 24/7 and hope to grab whoever sneaks over to take it in the
dead of night." But I don't live in a dream world 'yknow.

I think the tack I took at least saved the seller's from totally losing
their merchandise, they just got stuck shipping the stuff out and back.

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented."