Ordinary Nothing

Someone broke into our office last night.

He (Maybe it was a woman, we don’t know. I’m making a statistical assumption. If any overly feminist reader wants to complain that women are also perfectly capable of breaking into offices while possibly on drugs, I concede the point) entered through a window on our second floor kitchen, and covered parts of the kitchen in mud.

The alarm went on almost straight away, since there’s a motion (volume? depth?) sensor in the kitchen. This didn’t seem to bother him too much. As it happened, the security company first calls my boss to let him know there may be a problem, and only after getting to him (or maybe if after some time they can’t) they made a call to the police to send someone. By the time the police arrived it was a long time later, and the guy was long gone.

He turned on the lights (well, if the alarm is wailing, using a flashlight to avoid notice would be stupid, that’s true), and went through the storage room, but apparently didn’t touch anything. He then went downstairs, again turned on the lights, and started to rifle through drawers.

The only thing missing (that we noticed) was the money from the petty-cash box. About 30 ILS overall. Hardly worth his time.

He also took a fireproof locked strongbox and carried it with him outside when he left. It’s not really clear why, since it was locked but they key was in the lock. After he left the building, he dedicated the time to look over the box and opened it (This was BTW still in the premise at the parking area, so he didn’t take it away with him, but spent the time still here while supposedly the police were on their way).

Sadly, for him that is, the box only contained CDs, which he apparently didn’t want. They were left strewn on the ground near the box where we found it on the afterward.

He didn’t touch the computer, or any of the equipment and devices he have in the office. No great damage was done.

Basically we can come up with four options:

1. The likeliest possibility is that it was a drug user that wanted some quick cash to buy more dope. This explains the somewhat odd behaviour.
2. Another possibility is that this was also an opportunity to scope the premise before a larger and more elaborate burglary. It could be that the purpose was to see the area and try to find out if there is anything inside that’s worth a full break-in. As a precaution we made extra sure we have backups of everything stored on the computers, but there’s nothing much beyond that to do.
3. Very unlikely, but it could also be some sort of an industrial espionage attempt, and the minor theft was to throw off the scent. While we do have competitors, there’s nothing likely to justify this, so this possibility doesn’t get much credit.
4. There is the new investigation office above us. Maybe someone wanted to get at them, and didn’t count floors properly. From the appearance of our offices it should be quite clear that we’re dealing with laser systems rather than making investigations, but who knows how observant the guy is?

January 5th, 2005 at 20:00 EET | Categories: Miscellaneous | Track comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.