Puglia theft
Aug 29th 2023, 9:08 pm
#1
Thread Starter
Joined: Aug 2023
Posts: 1
Puglia theft
Hello. I am posting here as a lot of you have moved to Puglia and may know best how to help my situation.
I am an artist who shoots a lot in Italy and shows my work around the US and Europe in Galleries.
On August 1 I went to Puglia with my family for vacation and to shoot. We rented a large house outside of Ostuni near Carovigno. A long story short, while we slept someone broke in and stole my camera gear, and my wife's purse then stole the car keys and our Audi rental car. I am 99.99% sure it was an inside job because of details that are too long to go into here. I contacted the police and the house manager went with me to translate. The report took forever but went fine. Little does the thief know but hidden inside one of the cameras is an Apple air tag tracker. I'm guessing the car was taken to a remote spot and stripped. The tracker did not show up for 3-4 days so we left Italy and flew home. Since then air tag has pinged me all day every day and here's the kicker, it's less than 500m from the police station in an apartment. It has not moved in 2 weeks.
The police have quit responding to my inquiries. If this was NY, I know a couple of guys that could knock on their door and "kindly" ask for it back. I sadly don't know "those guys" in Italy.
I am dealing with my insurance as well as AirBnB and trying to work things out. But what sucks is I know exactly where it is. Any idea how to deal with something like this? (FWIW the camera bag contents are valued at $32,000 so this isn't just forget about it and spend $1000 and buy a new one.)
Private Investigator?
Open to ideas.
FWIW the police couldn't have been less surprised
I am an artist who shoots a lot in Italy and shows my work around the US and Europe in Galleries.
On August 1 I went to Puglia with my family for vacation and to shoot. We rented a large house outside of Ostuni near Carovigno. A long story short, while we slept someone broke in and stole my camera gear, and my wife's purse then stole the car keys and our Audi rental car. I am 99.99% sure it was an inside job because of details that are too long to go into here. I contacted the police and the house manager went with me to translate. The report took forever but went fine. Little does the thief know but hidden inside one of the cameras is an Apple air tag tracker. I'm guessing the car was taken to a remote spot and stripped. The tracker did not show up for 3-4 days so we left Italy and flew home. Since then air tag has pinged me all day every day and here's the kicker, it's less than 500m from the police station in an apartment. It has not moved in 2 weeks.
The police have quit responding to my inquiries. If this was NY, I know a couple of guys that could knock on their door and "kindly" ask for it back. I sadly don't know "those guys" in Italy.
I am dealing with my insurance as well as AirBnB and trying to work things out. But what sucks is I know exactly where it is. Any idea how to deal with something like this? (FWIW the camera bag contents are valued at $32,000 so this isn't just forget about it and spend $1000 and buy a new one.)
Private Investigator?
Open to ideas.
FWIW the police couldn't have been less surprised
