Stolen Jewelry, Bikes - Even a Fiberglass Shark - Sold on Police Auction Site

Psst. Over here. Want to buy some jewelry? Maybe a bike? Some DVDs? Yeah, you’re right, it’s all stolen stuff. But it’s okay. Trust me.

And it is, in fact, totally legal if you’re buying stolen property from a police department. Departments must sell the unclaimed goods that pile up in their property rooms, with the revenue going back to the department or municipality.

Many local agencies, including the and police departments, now expedite that process by using an online service called Property Room that functions much like eBay for stolen, seized and forfeited goods. Police say it’s a much better system than having to stage their own auctions, as they used to do.

“It’s proven to be a very efficient alternative,” said Kenilworth Police Chief John Petersen. His department has been using Property Room since 2005, with all revenue going into the village’s general fund. “The costs are minimal and it’s just a much better option for us.”

Property Room was founded in 1999 by a former Long Beach, NY police detective turned entrepreneur. The company now works with more than 2,700 law enforcement agencies around the country, which give Property Room a percentage of the sale price of each item in exchange for picking up, appraising, selling and shipping the items to buyers.

Over the years, Property Room has seen its share of bizarre items, including tombstones, fire hydrants and a seven-foot fiberglass shark, according to company spokesperson Gina Zuk.

Closer to home, the goods local police sell are generally more mundane — jewelry, bikes and tools tend to dominate property rooms. Every now and then, something unusual appears, like some G.I. Joe action figures and a fur coat in Des Plaines, or the two-and-a-half-ton floor jack currently sitting in the Winnetka Police Department’s property room. The Wilmette Police Department once used Property Room to sell a canoe.

Local police said they like using Property Room instead of organizing their own auctions because it saves them time and hassle, and because the power of the Internet brings exponentially more bidders than their parking lot sales did. The Wilmette Police Department began using Property Room in 2007 because the money their sales made for the village's general fund didn't outweigh the price of putting them on.

“We started using it as an opportunity to save overtime costs,” said Wilmette Deputy Police Chief Kyle Perkins. “We were spending a lot of overtime organizing our police auction each spring.”

Des Plaines Police Cmdr. Nick Treantafeles said his department has made about $5,000 off Property Room sales, all of which they turn over to Des Plaines Crime Stoppers, since it started using the company five years ago. The system is a huge improvement over running the department’s own auctions, Treantafeles said.

“We’d have to transport all the stuff to a site to sell,” he said. “It was very time consuming and labor intensive.”

Additional reporting by Casey Cora, Christopher Brinckerhoff, Joanna Schneider and Carrie Porter.