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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Possible Stolen Red Camera. Help Needed.

Indie Rentals said:
This is not a Red camera "first" that I ever wanted to be involved with. However, I am. I know there are a lot of Red One reservation holders that plan on renting out their cameras. Hopefully if this happens to any of you, we can all help each other recover our equipment.

We have gone almost four years without a losing a single camera, but that seems like it may change.

We shipped a Red One (serial number is 90, 91 or 93 - confirming ASAP), to Fresh Meadows, NY. Just outside Queens and Manhattan for a previous/established customer to use on his short film "On the Way Back" shooting from 12/3 - 12/9/07. He called us on 12/11/07 to extend his rental to the 12th (due to weather) and confirmed paying for his rental with a wire transfer confirmation number.

The camera never came back, the wire never came in and no tracking or wire transfer confirmation numbers lead us to anything. Now, his phones are disconnected and emails are unanswered.

The rental customer's first name his Abdul. If anyone has any information that could lead to the recovery of our equipment, please PM me. I really would appreciate the information.

Thank you and happy holidays.
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I feel for you man. It seems almost like deja-vu for me. I rented out my HVX-200 to a fellow who supposedly had a production company specializing in producing corporate video, and music videos (Iron Mountain Entertainment) , and at first seemed O.K. Him having done work for a couple of local bands, I trusted him, but Same thing, he called to extend his rental, and gave me his Visa number, but it was over the limit, and afterwards his phone went unanswered. Got the camera back a few days later, but he said the guy doing the post had my P2 cards, and would return them. A month went by, his phone disconnected, no email contact, so I played hardball, and reported the P2 cards as stolen, with the serial numbers. Two days later, I get a visit from the Police notifying me they had been seized, and they had been used for an utterly despicable purpose, and I won't be getting them back until one month after the accused has been sentenced.

News releases:
http://www.rwnicholson.com/Witten.htm
http://www.rwnicholson.com/Whitten-private contribution.htm

So now there is one thing I have learned about all of this: Unless I am physically present with the camera, I will demand insurance for the full value of the camera, or charge the full value of the camera on the guys credit card, refunding its value less the rental upon return. I will also insist on getting at least one piece of secure ID (inside front page of passport, or drivers license), as well as the guy's Social security number, and verifying character and personal references. These days you cannot do business with expensive gear on trust alone.
 
Here's a crazy idea - is it worth having a blacklist of stolen cameras at Red so that a firmware update could brick the camera in question? Then at least this Abdul guy would either not be able to engage new features with Firmware updates (that is if he knew about the blacklist), or else if he didn't know about the blacklist and he tried to update his firmware he would have a useless, bricked camera. This might possibly discourage future thefts of the Red camera. There is a potential for this kind of thing with the Red camera if it is indeed uniquely identifiable (but would be a complicated job - one worth doing if your insurance company lowered your premium, though). Didn't the very first Red prototype get stolen from a show ages ago? I bet Jim & the guys would love to get revenge on people like this by devising a system like the one I've described. Like someone said earlier a first gen Red camera's going to stick out like a sore thumb pretty soon, especially if it has old features enabled. Everyone keep their eyes peeled and their ears open (especially in the region where the camera got nicked - it's the kind of thing a camera assistant might notice on a job...first-gen Red camera, old features etc). I think maybe we should set up a quick-response, World-wide Red vigilante/revenge squad against these scumbags (we could even get Jim to design some costumes...and weapons ;-)

David Wyatt.
 
Maybe. . . just Maybe when the guy finally got the RED in his hands and saw what an awesome camera it was, he like had a heart attack, an awesome orgasm, or simply just blew a fuze.

He's probably face down in some drainage ditch somewhere with his pants have way past his knees causing up a real stink at the side of the road.

The camera's probably just fine, neatly and safely tucked away in the trunk of the car. . .

Anythings possible, right?

Maybe not
 
Borzoifilms said:
So now there is one thing I have learned about all of this: Unless I am physically present with the camera, I will demand insurance for the full value of the camera, or charge the full value of the camera on the guys credit card, refunding its value less the rental upon return. I will also insist on getting at least one piece of secure ID (inside front page of passport, or drivers license), as well as the guy's Social security number, and verifying character and personal references. These days you cannot do business with expensive gear on trust alone.
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Probably the most affordable and practical security solution is mentioned above. And of course any additional technical solutions will augment the consciencious effort of the equipment owner. Thanks.
 
Organised crime and scammers

Organised crime and scammers

Sorry to hear that your RED hasn't been found.

Mitch wrote that the description seemed to match a scammer he may have come across.

You can't be too careful. In the UK in 2006/07 over 50 scams and burglaries were conducted by an Eastern European gang. The gang leaders used local UK hoods usually with a drug problem, that were know to the police.

The gangs activities impacted every major rental company in the UK.

One company lost two cameras from a van that was being loaded on their loading dock, the tech has his back turned for no more than 20 seconds.

Their night time activities included breaking in downstairs store room while the owner was upstairs, peeling roofing knocking holes in walls the list goes on and on.

They revisited some of their victims too, one of my friends was done twice and then they still tried two more times after he increased security. He ended up sleeping on the premises to try and catch them, unwisely sleeping beneath a window, the very window they chose to break in!

One time they walked out of a small post house with an edit deck while it was in use!

Another trick was to follow runners who pickup video kit for production often in a car or small van with poor security. Usually a runner will have a few stops to make, they simply follow him and smash and grab out of the car.



The most public case happened in Hungry in 2006 where a BBC production team had setup an edit suite for the TV series Robin Hood. They stole decks and four master tapes, which they held for £1m ransom.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=402584&in_page_id=1770

Then there was the French company that lost two HD cameras, the camera crew being lured into in a field for a helicopter shoot.

The UK police and interpol were very slow to respond, eventually setting a task force after the 20th incident. Insurance companies didn't seem to care. Various security ideas were put to Sony including pin operation ect.

I hope that RED doesn't suffer the same attention, but since many RED guys are new to the rental business I hope the recent horrid UK experience is a heads up as to what to expect.


This is how one post house vented their anger after being scammed in July this year, it includes video of the crime. http://www.johnkeily.co.uk/



Mike Brennan
 
Here's my advice, call Anton Chigurh.

no-county-old-men.jpg


I am truly sorry to hear about your camera. I hate people who steal.
 
sorry to hear about this...it reminds me of something that happened to me...

the year was 2000, the place venice, ca, the time 830 am

so i am the head of production of a rather large production company/ internet site. we have 4 facilites and are renting 20 edit bays. hundreds of employees, a real machine.

so we are moving out of a stage facility and taking the two media composers and moving them to our corporate headquarters. i have the post sups schedule a move with the co we are renting the avids from because i do not want to screw up the move, have the pros do it right.

well at 820 am a truck pulls up, the guys flash some paperwork come in and tear down the avids, load them in the truck and drive off. i am at another facility at the time and i just assume that everything is going smoothly.

around 835 i get a call from the stage manager, he says xyz company is here and they want to pick up the avids, but xyz already came by and picked them up.

i immediately think it is a miscommunication and that in ten minutes or so someone will show up at HQ with the bays....

long story short, they were stolen.

three years later i get a call from a detective and he tells me that they found one of the parts from the avid at a guys house they caught for stealing. turns out he was an x-employee of xyz company and he had done this to many production companies over the years and finally got caught...

being 2000 when a full blown avid with digibeta decks, dv decks and beta decks was worth about 200k+each, you would think that the LAPD would make it a priority to solve the case...not so, they did not care and just got lucky 3 years later...

i know it will not bring back the camera but maybe it entertained you and let you forget about it for a few minutes. good luck and ill join that posse anyday to go punish the perp.
 
Here's an idea...when you update the firmware, you have to put in a registration code that is unique to every RED camera system board/owner (this could be initially entered upon receiving the camera as a sort of activation security feature) or it doesn't work. If it doesn't work, then you have to contact RED to arrange reactivation of the camera just as you would if you bought a RED from someone and needed it serviced/checked. Only RED could change/reset it via replacing/accessing the system boards directly. You could make it part of the onboard flash ROM or something. If someone calls in for a stolen RED then RED calls the BLUE with the caller information and the BLUE looks at the RED to figure out how it got there so they can return it to the rightful owner. Just a thought... :red_bandana:

(BLUE is the cops in case you were wondering)
 
How about cutting loose with Abdul's last name? We previously owned a digital security company. There are ways to digitally track deadbeats. Need more detailed info ....
 
Another thing to consider, guys. Would cost you about $120 a year, but I bet your insurance company would cut you a deal if you promised to have one of these in your cases. I would suggest stashing one in each case before you rent it, and cut the request time to once every three hours or so.

If I'm not misreading the limitation (which I most certainly am) This would give you updates of your camera's location, accurate to the street for just under nineteen days.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/204367089/lightning-round-zoombak-gps-tracking-device
 
im.thatoneguy said:
Deadman's switches are just asking for a disaster on set due to a malfunction. Passive protection seems like the best (if any) solution.
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Thats a problem. The camera shouldn't be necessarily disabled. If you have an error (could be operators mistake) you're fu2ked.
It should much more clear for everybody in this industry: you cannot use the files if the camera is reported stolen.
Prevents stealing, doesn't it ?

RedAlert/Cine/Scratch are locked to convert/play files from cameras reported stolen.
If there should be communication problems its not the camera getting useless on set of your legal and good clients, just the conversion/playback.
 
Stuart English said:
Please let everyone that you do business with know that RED ONE cameras have a unique 9 digit electronic serial number - a P.I.N - that complements the physical serial number tag. The latter may be erased, defaced or otherwise tampered with, but the P.I.N can't.

The P.I.N is also written to every video frame recorded (its in the .R3D file) but an instant view of the camera P.I.N is available by pressing the key to the right of the joystick, plus the joystick itself. The P.I.N will then be displayed in the rear LCD panel. In the case of my test camera, the P.I.N is ABC_123_XYZ

The P.I.N is also displayed on the rear LCD panel and on all monitor ports at camera boot up from Build 8 firmware onwards.
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So, we mentioned it briefely before but #97 seriously says "N/A" for it's P.I.N when checked with any of the above methods. Are other 1-100's cameras displaying proper P.I.N's or is this something to be concerned with?
 
OK, update: Anthony from Airsealand was kind enough to drive by Mr. Wahid's address and it looks like he moved out just over a week ago. We're happy to reward anyone with information that leads to the recovery of our equipment.

Thank you, everyone, for your support, ideas and sentiments.
 
Did you ever give out the actual serial #? The more facts you post, the better your chances of recovery and it will also keep some of the other Red owners that have a 90# from being harassed.
 
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