Man hopes app on his stolen laptop leads police to thief

BOSTON -- A Boston man is hoping an application he installed in his stolen computer will lead police to the whereabouts of the thief.

On Monday, the computer science student walked along the Roxbury Street where he says he was attacked and his laptop was stolen.

"All of a sudden they reached around and grabbed me and tackled me to the ground. And somebody else came running from across the street to help with the attack. So clearly they had been working as a team," the victim explained.

But the victim had a partner, too: a free app he had installed that tracks a laptop or phone after it’s been stolen or goes missing. What's more, the app takes a picture of anyone who tries to use the device, and emails it to you.

“The next person who connected to a network with it had his photo taken and his IP address logged and a physical address given. And then I forwarded that information to the police," the victim said.

But the victim says the picture the computer took is not a picture of the man who attacked him on the street and took his laptop.

The man in the picture told 7News he got the computer from someone who said they needed it fixed.

“He showed me the laptop. He said he needed a password off of it and he needed to sell it for somebody that he knew. So I was like, ‘Okay, what’s that like a screen picture?’ I knew it wasn’t his. So I was like, ‘I don’t know, I don’t want to do anything like this ‘cause problems happen,’ So I just shut it down and gave it to someone else. I was very upset. I haven’t been through so much stress in one day in a long time. I just hope everything goes right, you know. I’m sorry for the guy whose laptop was stolen. I wish I could help him more and I hope he gets his laptop back,” the man said.

Boston Police released a statement saying, "Detectives are making progress in this case and are hoping to be able to return the victim's property to him soon."

The victim, shaken by the violence in his neighborhood, says he's counting on his software to help police solve this crime.

"I hope that at least this technology allows them to track down who did this and bring them to justice," said the victim.

The victim told 7News his tracking program just got another hit and police believe his laptop is somewhere in Brighton.

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