Watch Out for Laptop Theft at Airports
When traveling with your laptop, be careful for a scam set up to steal it at airport security checkpoints.
Here’s how the con works:
A group of thieves try to get between you and your laptop at airport security — at the metal detector. One of the grifters will get in front of you, while another who has already passed through security waits on the inside. You put your laptop conveyor to pass it through the X-ray scanner, and the con man in front of you makes sure to set off the metal detector on purpose. He puts on a good show, making sure to take plenty of time and cause enough confusion to delay you and distract people. In the meantime, your laptop comes out of the conveyor, and it sits there untouched and probably out of your view.
The second thief is waiting for it to arrive and simply picks it up and walks away. No security person on the inside typically knows or cares who owns the items coming through. To make the scheme even harder to detect, the thief on the inside might even make a quiet hand-off, so a third grifter ends up with your laptop.
So be careful at airport security, and try to keep an eye on your laptop. Even the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has issued warnings about this.
Once they have your laptop, plus all the other goodies in your bag, not only can they resell the electronics, they, or whomever they sell it to, can hack into it and probably find loads of valuable personal information.
