Thief gets his own billboard after robbing advertising agency

It’s a very common crime in my part of the city: a thief puts on a orange reflective vest and maybe a hard hat and steals some a)electrical equipment, b)large bits of metal, c)whatever. Thief then sells his booty for scrap, collecting a tiny fraction of what the goods are actually worth to their original owner. Here in Philadelphia, thieves have been known to actually steal manhole covers and sell them as scrap metal. Indeed.

A similar thief in New Zealand may get what’s coming to him though. He stole 15 transformers worth almost $5000 dollars, most likely because he wanted to sell the copper in them, which is worth about $150 dollars. But the equipment he stole belonged to an advertising company, and they’re doing what advertising companies do best… advertising it. They captured an image of him on a security camera, and put up a billboard with his face on it.

“It’s a crime that has a big impact on our company, and he’s netted some small change from it,” says Mark Venter, owner of the company. So they decided to do what advertising companies do best. “It was too good an opportunity to ignore,” says Mr Venter. “We felt obligated to say ‘right, can we match this guy’s face to a name?’”

Good stuff.