Mediaite and Law & Crime Offices Robbed: How Suspect Was Busted With $30k of Our Stolen Stuff

In one of the most meta crimes ever committed, a suspect entered the office that houses Mediaite and the Law & Crime network and stole thousands of dollars of property — and was later caught thanks to multiple security cameras, an honest pawn store owner, and a New Jersey cop who also happened to co-host a show with Mediaite owner Dan Abrams .

The suspect, who was eventually identified as 28-year-old David Jaramillo of Cranbury, New Jersey, was seen on security cameras inside the Mediaite offices wearing a courier’s vest and going through what appeared to be every single desk drawer in the office and adjoining production studio. The entire criminal act took about an hour and forty minutes as Jaramillo made off with over $30,000 worth of property — several laptops (some with “Property of Law & Crime” stickers on them), tablets, production equipment (taken from an area with a lot of Law & Crime branding), and books about crime (and possibly a hoodie, maybe one that should have read “This is not an ideal place to try to get away with a crime”).

Abrams provided a play-by-play of the caught-on-camera crime on the live police show he hosts on Reelz On Patrol: Live :

The problem with stealing modern technology is that much of it includes tracking equipment, which was the case of one of the laptops stolen from the office. The owner of that laptop was able to follow his device as it traveled about 40 miles down the New Jersey coast — to a pawn shop in Keyport, New Jersey called Cheaper For You.

Jaramillo attempted to pass off the cache of expensive tech as a bunch of random stuff he randomly found in a dumpster, but shop owner Adam Hady sensed something was up and refused to buy any of the ill-gotten goods.

Hady told Abrams during his appearance on Dan Abrams Live on NewsNation on Tuesday:

Hady: Well, when he kept unloading MacBook after MacBook after iPad, you start to realize, okay, like where is this stuff coming from? And then I asked him, and he told me he found it in a dumpster. So, right then and there, you have red flags jumping out left and right. So, I open them up, I power them on, and I see every single one is locked, password protected. And of course, he doesn’t know any of them. So, I’m explaining to him, you know, these are useless, you can’t do anything with these. These don’t seem right to be in your property. And he got very frustrated. And was just, “Hey, just take them for parts.” And I said, “No, I’m good on that. I’ll pass on these.” And of course he got super frustrated and ended up packing up all his stuff there and headed out of the store.

Abrams: Now, does this happen a lot to you at a pawn shop where people come in with what, to you, seem to be clearly stolen items?

Hady: Well, we’ve been in business for like 25 years. And of course, you occasionally have your, you know, stolen jewelry or something like that, and we work with law enforcement to try to help them out as best as we can. But when you see someone coming in, like, this was just such a ridiculous situation. Just tons of Apple products with no chargers or passwords or anything. This one was definitely a first of unusual buys for us.

Meanwhile, Abrams went to the office the following Monday morning after being told about the robbery, and the New York Police Department were already investigating. But when it was discovered that the stolen property had been tracked to an address in New Jersey, Abrams mentioned that he knew a police captain, Tom Rizzo , who worked in that area who just happened to be his co-host on On Patrol: Live . The NYPD advised Abrams to contact Rizzo, and within half an hour of Jaramillo’s unsuccessful visit to the pawn shop, he was arrested by NJ police and the FBI in an alley right outside the shop — where he was heard calling other pawn shops.

Jaramillo is expected to be extradited to New York where he faces potential charges of third-degree burglary and third-degree grand larceny.

Watch the video above via NewsNation.