The priceyness and portability of photo gear makes camera rental and retail outlets a popular target of burglars, and last week yet another big name in the industry was looted. The camera store Midwest Photo in Columbus, Ohio, was broken into on March 15th, and a huge number of items were stolen.
The burglars got into the new facility in the late night hours by sawing the roof and ceiling open, sliding down a pole, and then entering the stock/storage area. The entry was so stealthy that the perpetrators were able to stay long enough to steal hundreds of cameras, lenses, and photo accessories by Sony, Canon, Nikon, Tamron, Olympus, Panasonic, Hasselblad and Sigma.
Midwest Photo declined to share the dollar value of the stolen items.
“This break in appears to have been pre meditated and carried out by experienced individuals,” Midwest Photo tells PetaPixel. “Police and local detectives are involved as this break in is potentially a part of a larger crime wave going throughout the Midwest at this time.”
Here are a couple of surveillance camera frames showing one of the burglars creeping around in the stock room:
Midwest Photo is in the process of gathering the serial numbers of missing items and using scraping software to scour the Web in hopes that items show up for sale somewhere online.
P.S. Two services/tools you can use to track serial numbers are Lenstag and the Stolen Camera Finder.
