| There's nuance to the laws though. The pawn shop has to, at 'bare minimum' do the proper paperwork (typically copying ID and taking fingerprints among other things.) The general "way it's supposed to work" is that now the police have a clean lead to the thief or part of the ring; If the shop doesn't follow the procedures, at least where I live, you -don't- have to make them whole and there's a crapton of fines. That said, it's still a bit of a sham in some ways. In 2011 a former niece absconded with ex-wife's <6 month old Laptop, <1 year old DSLR, Her TV, and the wedding ring [0] just after my ex moved in with her brother at the start of the separation (Ex BIL also had TVs etc taken). It wasn't until their Fourth trip to the pawn shop [1] where the wedding band engraving made it just too hard to pretend the stuff wasn't stolen [2]. [0] - kinda knew that's when it was over, lol. [1] - Part of a chain that used to have their own show that was a bit of 'Pawn stars crossed with Jerry Springer' [2] - Ironically this worked out; since the wedding ring was never recovered but gold had gone way up, Renters Insurance covered the pawn shop costs and the added value back from the ring handled the deductible (The rest of the ring amount went to her costs related to the separation.) |