Stolen camera - Red One #1083

[Dominic Jones]

Hi everyone,

Wanted to make everyone aware (especially UK hire companies) that our Red One #1083 was stolen by a fraudulent hirer over the weekend. He was 6'4" tall, slim build and casually dressed - knew the lingo and talked like a filmmaker, posed as an independent director and paid for the hire in cash after presenting excellent fake ID documents and an insurance certificate he had also obtained with fraudulent ID under the same false name and address.

Please be careful...

If anyone comes across the kit or hears of a camera kit for sale, please either contact us at contact -at- fracturedfilms -dot- com or contact the UK CID.

Lost kit included the following:
Red one camera body #1083, with base production pack
Camera fitted with Les Bosher Nikon mount - quite rare I would guess - PL mount not supplied.
EVF,
3x Red Drives
18x Lexar CF cards
Allstar dovetail plate
Nikkor prime lens set (20mm f2.8, 24mm f2, 35mm f2, 50mm f1.4, 105mm f1.8, 105mm f2.8 macro, 180mm f2.8 - all but the 20 and 24 are geared with Redrock gears, all have common 72mm fronts and dymo-type lens designations on the front caps)
Charger plus 4x Red Bricks (#s 2071407, 2070407, 0282607, 0293107)
Mains AC adapter
Charger to camera power cable
Ronford-Baker Moose Bars
Battery Belt Clip
Assorted cables (VF, Drive, Audio)
RedrockMicro Follow-Focus
RedRockMicro Mattebox (deluxe kit with both 19mm and 15mm swing-away arms)
Visible Dust sensor cleaning kit plus Loupe
Several Noga Arms

All kit in black Peli cases.


In addition, cross hired from Pro-Motion hire, in marked Peli cases:
Panasonic BT-LH80WE LCD monitor, S/N D8TWA0745
Hawk-Woods MR2 Charger, S/N 271679
2x VL200 Batteries, S/N 2064, 2561


Any and all information on it's whereabouts would of course be very much appreciated, and be aware not to buy this as the serial number will be blacklisted with Red, locking out any possibility of repair, upgrade, or warranty claims...

Take care all, and mods, please feel free to link/move this to whichever parts of the forum it would be best placed.

Thanks,
Dom.

[Sean Solowiej]

Dom, this is every renter's worst nightmare. I am sorry it happened. Hopefully it will find its way back to you. FWIW I will keep your list in mind whenever I scan eBay, look at rentals, or see a Red shooting somewhere.

[ericyoung]

Sorry to hear your news Dominic.

Hopefully your insurance will pay up promptly.

Someone suggested that we all start taking photos of hirers - good full face and full length photos of would be easy to pass onto Crimestoppers and the police in the event of theft. Legit hirers should have no problem with it, but thieves will probably be a lot more wary of it - a good deterrent I think!

[Matthew Verkler]

Eric, good idea about renter photos. I also call the renter's insurance company to make sure everything is legit. I go so far as to make sure the phone number for the insurance company is real too.

Matthew Verkler

[David Wyatt]

Someone suggested that we all start taking photos of hirers - good full face and full length photos of would be easy to pass onto Crimestoppers and the police in the event of theft. Legit hirers should have no problem with it, but thieves will probably be a lot more wary of it - a good deterrent I think!

I was just thinking the same thing - definitely something to consider. Also, I don't know what kind of false ID this scumbag had but maybe it'd be worth scanning a copy of a potential hirer's photo ID (passport, driving licence)? Whenever I hire a car (which costs far less than a full camera package) I have to jump through more hoops than this and certainly don't find it an imposition.

Good luck with your case, Dom - hope it works out for you.

[RivaiC]

Hi there, a short question..

Why do you rent your camera without your people on set to take care of the equipments ? I notice the same story happen again and again, where rental rent the whole piece to fake guy and never came back. No camera guard ?

[Imran Farouk]

Sorry to hear that, I'm in the UK soon so I'll keep my ears and eyes open :)

I though most rental houses would have on sight security cameras? at least in the front... :S

[Stephen Williams]

Hi Dominic,

Sorry to hear of your loss. Any idea what happens to your place in the queue for an Epic if your camera is stolen or lost?

Best,

Stephen

[Eric Ulbrich]

All these cameras are getting stolen! Im so sorry to hear of this!

Perhaps RED could clarify for us. Is there anyway to embed a GPS tracker via RFID or something inside the body of the camera? I think the community would be more than happy to shell out a couple of hundred bucks just to have the comfort knowing that there is a GPS tracker inside the camera. New Iphones can do it. any thoughts?

[Frank Martin]

Once again so sorry to hear this
I looked into real time pet tracking GPS
units that are the size of a small beeper
they update every 5-30 min depending on
service. They range in cost from 150-400$
maybe we can come up with a big group
by. Just put it in your most valuable cases.

[Eric Ulbrich]

yeah, I looked into them as well. The problem is that the first thing someone is going to do after stealing the camera is ditch the cases. For myself at least my cases have my company name and info on them. For a theif, they would be the first things to be ditched. Having something that cannot be seen is very beneficial...

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I don't know how it works in the UK, but the first thing you should do, after filing a police report and notifying RED, is to determine if the insurance provided to you by the thief is legitimate. Even if he applied for that under a false ID, if the policy is legit, it should still cover in cases like this. In the USA, an insurer is not off the hook simply because they themselves failed in their own due diligence in underwriting a certain individual or company. File your insurance claim with them, turn over all info to your own insurance provider, get the two insurance companies talking and let them take it from there.

GPS trackers have been discussed before... Doesn't really help, IMO. Too easily thwarted, takes up extra space and resources in a camera, one more thing to potentially break, requires cellular network access or other form of communication to relay its location... Stolen camera gear is often taken quickly to other places like Saudi Arabia, Northern Africa, Brazil... When a theft of this level takes place, it's not typically some local indie filmmaker who's going to shoot his feature with the gear and then try to sell it on eBay or throw it into a dumpster when finished.

Good insurance and taking proper steps to cover your ass at all times will provide better protection than a GPS tracker every time. Buy third-party GPS units if you want and embed them into your equipment cases or into certain pieces of gear where they can be hidden, but not functionally intrusive -- vest on the steadicam, filter kit, etc... And yes, they will ditch the cases soon after the theft...

[Eric Ulbrich]

I agree with Jeff, get the insurance process rolling. You would be suprised at what they are sometimes capable of doing. Insurance companies also have vast networks of people who's business it is to track stolen items. Good Luck. hope it gets found!

[Andrew Martin]

Wow Dom so sorry to hear this.

I will keep my eyes out for anything and let the people i hire out to and production houses i know know about it.

Good idea on the photos front, will be doing that from now on.

Hope this works itself out for you asap.


Andi

[Lee Dashiell]

To many insurance companies this wouldn't be consider this theft because you handed them the camera on a rental, they would consider it fraud. Fraud is not covered under many insurance policies. I found that out the hard way with the "fraud" theft of an Aaton XTR super16mm film package with a Cooke zoom and 5 super speed zeiss primes....needless to say it was a terrible situation. I was not covered. Check your policy.

[Wesley Scoggins]

Would you still have his name and stuff? You could possibly pass that around to see if anyone else has dealt with someone claiming the same name.

Fake docs that good can be hard to get, and while it's really unlikely that he would be dumb enough to use them twice, maybe there is an off chance he got lazy and someone else had contact with him locally?

[Johnny Johnson]

As mentioned, if renting gear you MUST have fraud insurance

If a customer hired kit and ran off into the night with it, their insurance company cannot pay directly to the rental company, they can only pay to the customer who paid the policy, who has since disappeared.

Fraud insurance will take effect here when the customer's insurance company refuses to pay out.

[Jamie Havill]

Awful turn of events. Absolute best of luck locating the kit or scoring an insurance pay out. I'm doing a few shoots in the coming months around the UK with Reds and will keep my eyes open.

Edit: Johnny from cameraspeed? I'm renting from you in December! Small world!

[Stuart English]

All these cameras are getting stolen! Im so sorry to hear of this!

Perhaps RED could clarify for us. Is there anyway to embed a GPS tracker via RFID or something inside the body of the camera? I think the community would be more than happy to shell out a couple of hundred bucks just to have the comfort knowing that there is a GPS tracker inside the camera. New Iphones can do it. any thoughts?

Best thing to do is let us know that a camera has been stolen. As the serial number can be erased, we need to know the PIN, that can't be.

The PIN number is recorded in the .R3D file metadata for every frame we record, so a utility could I.D from the footage if it's desirable.

As we may also come across the camera later, having your information at hand is obviously helpful to any recovery process.

[Jason Wingrove]

Very good point Jeff, you guys did the right thing, presume your own insurance covers you in the event of fraud like this too though.
jas

[lubomir.zvolensky]

piece of MFer!

[Simon Blackledge]

Another thing some are doing is whenever you hire to someone you insist on a photo for your records.

[Andrew clemson]

That sucks. Heres to hoping theyre stupid enough to try and sell it back to the community. Ill keep an eye on Ebay and our local markets and equivelents.

[Mike Hadfield]

Sorry about that matey.

Based up in Newcastle so I'll pass on the info to everyone I know up here, and get them to pass it on also.

Mikey

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

Remember guys, these thieves don't sound like ordinary thieves for me.

It's pretty much likely that they could open the camera and ditch the GPS device very quickly if they get to know RED cameras now have this device.

Verifying legitimacy and taking photos of renters sounds like the best way to deal with this.