Topic: Student Finds Stolen Xbox 360 with His Wireless Controller

[Xessive]

Not sure if this should under the Gaming board. Interesting story nonetheless

The Standard Online reports that a student named Ryan Ketsenburg from Missouri State was able to recover his stolen Xbox 360 console using a bit of technological knowhow. Ketsenburg reports that he and a roommate came back from a school-sanctioned trip and were so tired they forgot to lock the door to their room.

When the students woke the next day, Ketsenburg realized that his Xbox had been stolen. According to a police report the student says that while he and his roommate were sleeping someone crept into the room and made off with the game system.

The thief neglected to take the wireless controller to the Xbox and Ketsenburg was able to get the controller to connect to the Xbox, meaning that the console was nearby. The game was afoot and Ketsenburg used the LEDs on the controller (which flash when the controller is out of range) to narrow the floor that the console was on down to the fifth floor of the multi-story dorm and finally to a specific room on the floor.

According to reports, the student then contacted the advisor living on the floor of the theft. The advisor searched the room and found the console. Ketsenburg was able to prove that the console was his when the wireless controller turned the Xbox on. He recovered his console, but found that the thief had reformatted the hard drive and that all of the saved games were gone.

Ketsenburg says that he is prosecuting the thief to the fullest extent of the law.

[Quemaqua]

Awesome.  I'd have gotten a bunch of friends together, gone in, and kicked his ass.  "Surprise, jerk!"

[iPPi]

Good stuff.

[Ghandi]

I showed this to Idol yesterday and was confused. Why didn't the person take the controller as well? Who steals a system and not the controllers to go with it?

[Pugnate]

Yea I read about this and found some things odd as well. Why did he not steal the controller, but then left the 360 connected and on in his room right after he stole it? Maybe he went out to buy a new controller.

Well, crooks do dumb things.

[idolminds]

My theory is he might have only stolen one controller when the dude had two. And the 360 could have been on downloading something from Live.

Or the thief was simply a moron.

[Quemaqua]

He probably stole it because he already had one and it RROD'd on him.  So he had controllers and didn't want to waste time and make extra noise when snatching the new one, so unplugged everything when he took it.

[Ghandi]

Well clearly the thief was a moron. The two controller theory makes sense, as does the RROD theory.

Another possibility is that the guy had a hidden controller just for this situation.

[Cobra951]

I'm surprised no one mentioned the most likely possibility: the guy ran in and ran out, afraid to get caught.  A console is easy to spot.  The controller could have been anywhere, behind or under something.

[Ghandi]

Good point.

The guy is really an idiot, though. To steal from someone in your own dorm is just stupid, given that people are going to know that the dudes PS3 on floor x was stolen, and you conveniently got a PS3 on that day. I mean, I'd say that 60% of the people in my 6-story freshmen dorm were extremely high on any given day, and we probably could have deduced that something fishy was up.

[gpw11]

Wrong.  What obviously happened is this guy stole a controller and then found a way to get an RA to help him score the Xbox.

[Pugnate]

Good theory Que.