Wireless Controller Used To Track Down Stolen Xbox 360

An Xbox 360 thief who wasn't as thorough as he should have been was busted after a wireless controller he forgot to swipe was used to track down the system.

Ryan Ketsenburg, a sophomore at Missouri State University, said someone entered his unlocked room while he and his roommate were sleeping and stole his console. When he woke and discovered his 360 was missing, he turned on a wireless controller that had been left behind and found that it was still connecting to the system. By moving throughout the residence with his controller, he was able to determine that the console was on the fifth floor, and followed it from there to a specific room.

The floor assistant checked the room where Ketsenburg believed the console was located and found it. The Xbox 360 was returned once he was able to prove it was his by turning the unit on with the wireless remote, but the hard drive had already been formatted.

The alleged offender has not been named, and at the time of the original report he had not yet returned to the room to discover the collapse of his criminal master plan. Ketsenburg told The Standard Online that he intends to prosecute the thief, saying, "I'm going to try to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, because I had to follow all the rules, so let's make sure it gets done right."

There's a lesson to be learned in all of this. Do I have to tell you what it is? Stealing is wrong! (Less ethical lessons that you might take away from this are your own business and certainly not something I'm going to encourage. Show some respect for your fellow gamer.)

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No, the lesson to learn here is if your going to steal a 360, take the controller with you.

Of course if I knew where he lived I would wait till he was asleep then kick him in the balls an run off.

That's pretty funny :p And impressive.

Wow, well done!
He's like a digital-age Hardy boy!

This just goes to show you that only the well thought out plans will work when it comes to stealing... something that petty criminals rarely do.

You would think that people would realize whether or not they have the head for stuff like this... if the guy wanted the XBOX THAT badly, you would think he would have taken the controller with him too.

That was surprisingly clever and I hope the guy who stole this gets a kick in the balls for stealing and FORMATTING something as sacred as a gamers' console, instead of spending 2 days in jail with a 20 dollar fine.

Why would you steal a console but forget the controller?

Question from non-360 owner.

How do you track one using only the wirless controller? Does it have a signal strength bar or something?

To all the people asking about the controller, he probably had more than one, and the thief didn't need more than one.

Edit: And fix-a-spade, it only has a range of thirty feet. So he managed to narrow it down to the floor, and then through process of elimination, found the room.

fix-the-spade:
Question from non-360 owner.

How do you track one using only the wirless controller? Does it have a signal strength bar or something?

If you use a controller with an xbox then it is set to start up that specific xbox when switched on. You can change this by pressing a small button on the top to make it look for new consoles. As the controller can frequently disconect at really long ranges, it probably detected the console a few floors above, then when they went out with it to find the console it disconnected meaning they were getting further away.

Pretty damned clever way of finding stolen property... and pretty damned dumb to steal from somebody who lives in the same building. College thieves should stick to pirating music and stealing toilet paper.

That's a good way to track it down. He is lucky it was still in the dorms though.

Still no reason to own a 360.

Cid SilverWing:
Still no reason to own a 360.

Was that really necessary?

It's gonna be hard to find a techno-savvy enough jury to understand that as evidence. It seems to me like there's a lot of ways to weasel out of a guilty verdict from "Well, an Xbox Wireless controller worked with an Xbox 360."

Fail~

Hahah. Nice that he got it back the same day.

HobbesMkii:
It's gonna be hard to find a techno-savvy enough jury to understand that as evidence. It seems to me like there's a lot of ways to weasel out of a guilty verdict from "Well, an Xbox Wireless controller worked with an Xbox 360."

You've got a point there... hopefully, the prosecution is smart enough to get through the skulls of the (maybe) thick jury.

As for the thief, he was stupid, and deserves to be punished for his crime.

That's prime-time awesome.

thebobmaster:

Cid SilverWing:
Still no reason to own a 360.

Was that really necessary?

Just let the fail troll fail. It's nature's way of showing them people dont care wabout what they say.

I've read a similar story where a woman whose laptop was stolen tracked the thieves down by remotely accessing the laptop's webcam. Through it, she was able to identify the thieves and got some photographic evidence out of it.
Just shows how awesome technology is.

Indigo_Dingo:

thebobmaster:

Cid SilverWing:
Still no reason to own a 360.

Was that really necessary?

Its par for the course on a Wii article.

But, alas, this isn't a Wii article.

FYI I have a PS3. I don't support the Wii because it's a wee console imo (predictable pun).

Graustein:
I've read a similar story where a woman whose laptop was stolen tracked the thieves down by remotely accessing the laptop's webcam. Through it, she was able to identify the thieves and got some photographic evidence out of it.
Just shows how awesome technology is.

That is pretty sweet.

That's pretty resourceful of him.

And incredibly sloppy of the thief.

Awesome, and clever.