. . . steal one. Who would know?
This prompted a thought. What are some things that a person could steal that they could reasonably maintain ownership/use of? Not a whole lot, at least nothing big/worth stealing as far as I can tell. Too much technology these days, too much invasion of privacy.
Cars. Seriously. The crew I ran with kind of went a different direction after I left. One of their friends up in Denver had a brand new pickup he wanted out of the payments on. Paid one of 'em $500 to make it disappear. She literally took the keys and drove it to Albuquerque. They kept it in the garage but they kept it. Tooled around town in it for years. There's this idea of massive surveillance and police oversight but it's a lie. My wife had her laptop smash'n'grabbed out of her mom's car. I had Prey on it and was able to give the cops the running location and IP. Nobody gave a fuck. She had her phone stolen off the ground as she dropped it and I had a text conversation with the thief, so much as offering him $200 cash to get it back but it was fuckin' gone. Apple, in case you're curious, has zero compunctions about reactivating a stolen iPhone and AT&T doesn't give the first fuck about IMEIs. you can get away with a lot more than you think.
During one two year stretch when I was particularly poor, I would take a photo of someone else's tabs, print it out on my color printer, "laminate" it with Scotch tape, and then glue it onto my car's license plate. Went without tabs, insurance, or emissions testing for 3 years. Not proud of that, but the "surveillance state" isn't. They haven't got a clue what is going on right under their noses.