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Did I break the law?

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T

T-K

Guest
What is the name of your state? Florida.


During the hurricane a while back the sprinkler system went off in the office building across the street from where I work. They took their old computers, stripped them of their hard drives, and piled them outside next to their dumpster. After about three weeks of them sitting there I decided to take home three computers and three monitors and see if they work. One monitor worked, one computer had a dead mother board, one had a dead power supply, and the other worked fine. So the next night I borrowed a truck and took home 82 computers and 79 monitors. Did I steal from the dumpster?

After I cleaned everything up I now have a total of 61 working computers (minus the hard drives) ranging from Pentium 2 333mb to Pentium 3 1.2ghz and even two Mac G4s, 68 working monitors, and a lot of extra sticks of ram, video cards, sound cards, floppy drives, cases, CPUs, and cd-rom drives.

I got no real use for these so I was going to get a bunch of cheap hard drives (my boss and friends have agreed to chip in) and donate the computers to charity during Christmas. I don't want to risk getting some charity in trouble for receiving stolen goods, if they are stolen, so what should I do?

I know that I should ask them about it but the company owner is a prick and has gotten into it with my boss before about our customers parking in their lot or when we put some boxes into the same dumpster from the story above. I will ask if I have to but if I can avoid it I will.

Oh yeah, don't worry about me giving faulty computers to charity. I am A+ certified and worked at an electronics/computer shop for three years. I was the type of kid who would take a clock apart just to see how it works. I should be able to make sure these things are not dangerous.
 


V

Vojobo

Guest
It's just recycling

If it is against the law it shouldnt be! Your just reusing the computers that are gonna get buried in the ground anyways. Finding stuff outside of dumpsters and trash cans is great you find some really good stuff. Sorry i didnt really answer your question, but I see no problem with it :D

PS

Nice find though I wish I could find all those computers and moniters
 

CdwJava

Senior Member
You can ask the police, or, ask an attorney. But, my guess is that once they were tossed in the dumpster, they were trash. Maybe you vioated a local ordinance for foraging in the dumpsters, but I doubt that you could be considered a thief for this as you are not depriving anyone of the property if they had already discarded it.

- Carl
 

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