The 27-year old Westmead man sold mainly late model high-performance vehicle alloy wheels and tyres on eBay. The wheels and tyres were allegedly stolen from the boots of a large number of Subaru motor vehicles throughout Sydney.
Detectives from State Crime Command Property Crime Squad and the St George Local Area Command arrested the man at 11am yesterday during a sting operation at Minchinbury, in Sydney's west. He was refused bail to appear in Penrith court today on charges of receiving and stealing.
Property Squad Commander, Detective Superintendent Ken McKay said the man allegedly sold 40 alloy wheels, eight laptop computers and other valuable items on eBay since October 2004.
McKay said the investigation started last year after detectives from St George identified an unusually large number of wheels and tyres being sold on eBay by the same seller.
McKay said a number of the illegally sold items had been recovered and is currently being returned to their rightful owners. With the help of a technology known as micro-dot, the police found it easier to track down the original owners of the properties.
Micro-dot is a property protection system which uses pinhead sized microdots printed with a unique identification number and applied on properties. This can be used to discreetly identify stolen property. Anyone stealing the marked item will have no idea how many or where the dots have been placed.
"A number of the items seized have been marked using this micro-dot technology which will allow us to identify the rightful owners," Mckay said.
eBay Trust & Safety director Alastair MacGibbon said the company worked closely with law enforcement agencies to help track the offenders.
"eBay has zero tolerance to any wrong doing....Where matters are being investigated by police, eBay will provide an information package including victim details, complete background information of the person under investigation and advice on what may be required for any search warrants," MacGibbon said.
