I have to be very careful what I say here, because there may or may not be legal implications – but lets just say, hypothetically speaking, that someone got robbed. A few months later, that person might be looking to replenish their sadly depleted jewellery collection, and find, oddly enough, that there is someone out there selling three items that are exactly the same as those that had been stolen. Not that strange, maybe, as the items aren’t rare, but enough of a coincidence that it’s worth waiting half an hour on hold on the police non urgent hot line (warm line?) to report it. The person who answered the phone might also be interested in this coincidence, and suggest that a written report would be worthwhile.
Some weeks might then go by, during which the original person might feel embarrassed at having raised the alarm so foolishly, until they got phoned by a police officer looking for some more information. The police, having quite a close, friendly and harmonious relationship with the internet site that specializes in allowing people to buy and sell goods, might then ask for a selling history from that particular vendor. And lo and behold, they might then come across a number of other items that have been sold by that vendor that are again identical to stuff stolen from our poor hapless robbery victim. And this time, the items are rarer and much more easily identifiable. And so there may be a search warrant in the vendors near future. And maybe the victim has already spent their insurance money but I bet they’d be feeling really quite chuffed at this present moment in time. And they might mutter under their breath “You’re going down, scum!” In theory.