Re: Here in the UK... off topic
Eh?
Even an idiot knows (well, many of them) that they should break up their haul into multiple locations. Here in the US, pawn shops (the typical item for cash location) are everywhere. In my part of the country, most pawn shows participate in a system where all transactions, including timestamp, customer info, and video are logged to a database for the law enforcement to search (it's run by the main city's police dept). Items are held for 30 days before they can be released for sale, allowing time for things to reported as stolen.
Amusingly enough, our PS4 was just pawned the other day, nearly 3 months after it was stolen. Not sure it was actually the person who stole it, or if it's been handed off a few times and finally someone decided they needed the cash more than the system. Sony dragged their feet for months on the search warrant served by our police department, only finally responding last week with the IP that related to the purchases made less than 24 hours after it was stolen. Of course, we now need to wait for the ISP to provide a physical location for the PD to serve a warrant against. Hopefully, a few people get snared and lose their shit over the idea of spending years in jail because they have an item associated to a felony that has a 20 year prison sentence, then roll on the actual criminal who broke into our house.
Unfortunately, the PS4 wasn't really the item we cared about; we want the two laptops back because they have years of professional data that my wife never backed up (a discussion for a different day).