Lurch’s Best Buy Mistake
TMZ.com reported exclusively yesterday that Angeline Jolie‘s brother James Haven was the unwitting source of those Brangelina-Shiloh baby shower pics that were stolen. Reading about this made me feel better about my own absent-mindedness because at least I can say, “I’ve never done anything as dumb as what Lurch did.”
Haven took pictures of his sister, Brad Pitt and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt at the baby shower in Namibia. But his camera broke soon after and when he returned to Los Angeles he took it to a Best Buy outlet (where be bought it) and asked them to fix it under the warranty. Best Buy sent the camera to Precision Camera and Video Repair in Enfield, Connecticut, and two Precision employees — Bill Keyes and Adam Beckwith — ID’ed the photos, downloaded them, tried to sell them and were busted by the FBI and Massachucetts authorities. For whatever reason it didn’t occur to Haven to — hello? — remove the digital card containing the photos before handing it over to Best Buy.
To be honest, I’d probably make a similar mistake. It just isn’t something that you’d normally think of being a problem.
Photos of Brangelina and their new baby are worth thousands upon thousands on the papparazzi/photo agency black market, and Lurch didn’t think to remove the card containing these photos before giving the camera to total strangers who, being best Buy emplyees, don’t make that much money? C’mon.
If you are a star, certainly you think about such things, but being mostly a regular joe who probably isn’t involved with the Hollywood scene, it probably wouldn’t have come to mind. Certainly, if I had a famous sister, it wouldn’t occur to me that people may want to look at the pictures on my camera that I took of her kid.
Give the guy a break! The levels of paranoid behaviour that stars have to develop would just seem weird to someone who isn’t directly affected by it. Remember when Diana Ross was a big deal a couple of decades ago and she used to have bodyguards suround her with a huge sheet of orange silk when she walked through airports as a way of, er, not drawing attention to herself? Crazy, but probably reasonable to a huge star. My friend works for a computer company here in Australia & people drop off their notebooks for repairs, stuffed full of porn & whatnot all the time. Most people focus on the broken item, not what might be stored inside. I’m sure Haven got a ticking off from sis but let’s not forget that it’s those employees who tossed their ethics out the window & broke the law, not Haven.