My home has 2 private streets, one that leads to my driveway and the other that goes up the side of my property that I park some of my vehicles (because you can never have too many vehicles) and is an easement to other properties. There s no reason for anyone I do not know to park on that street aftern10 at night (or virtually any time).

To get to my property you go through enough security cameras that it may rival Fort Knox.

So ~10:30 a car alarm goes off. Only one of my vehicles parked over there has an alarm. I go to investigate and there is a middle age lady with a nice wrangler (I suspect 35” tires, recovery points, not old (in good shape)). She apologizes and says she is having problems with her keys. I ask what she is doing parking there and she says it was nothing and that she had to go. I look at my Land Cruiser and it appears undisturbed. She takes off. Seems suspicious but I could see nothing damaged.

I go inside and read my email and I have 2 emails with deliveries with a total of 3 packages. I check the front, no packages I question if the stupid delivery person dropped the packages off on the side road. I check, no packages. Did the wrangler lady take the packages (worth about $700)? If she did, how would she know they were there? Maybe followed the fed ex vehicle or in cahoots with the fed ex driver.

Cameras: I consult the cameras. Wrangler goes through 1st camera (10:02 PM), drives up road, turns around drives out past first camera, 4 minutes (10:06). License plate reader did its job. Comes back a couple of minutes later (10:08), driving past first camera but sits at the bottom of the road for a while. Starts up road. Is parked a short amount of time when her alarm goes off. Cameras do not catch her actually taking anything because it was dark. She departs after I confront her, 31 minutes from passing first camera on way in to exiting first camera (10:39). These were the only two times in last ~5 years that vehicle had passed the first camera per the license plate scanner.

Seems likely she took the packages. I called Home Depot, they told me to dispute the credit card charges so I did. I was planning on filling out a police report tomorrow providing the license plate, photos of vehicle, photos of the driver, and timeline from the license plate scanner. Basically a lot of circumstantial evidence (no video of her actually taking the packages).

This evening an old car with an old man drives up my driveway. Old man appears to be in his 70s but is acting older. he has the 3 missing packages and states they were delivered to the wrong address and that he is returning them.

I question if the lady knew she was caught and had someone return the packages on her behalf or if this was some innocent set of coincidences and maybe lady went up my street to getaway from whatever.

I heavily lean toward porch pirate figured she was caught and what can she do? She likely did not know the scope of the videos, license plate readers, etc but she knew her car was seen and she had been seen and if I had a good memory I knew her license plate number (I did not without the cameras). Too much risk that she was caught so she arranged a plausible way to return the packages.

However, if someone followed the fedex driver to see the drop, it was not the nice wrangler. I did see on license plate scanner that cars entered street not long after the fed ex vehicle, but it was not close enough in time to be real obvious that they had followed the vehicle. I was going to look at videos for that tomorrow, but now there is no reason.

So what do you think? Porch pirate or strange set of circumstances?

Dan H.

San Diego, California

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