A northwest Iowa man is jailed in the Omaha area on a charge of selling several thousand dollars worth of stolen camera equipment through the website Craigslist. La Vista (Nebraska) Police Chief Bob Lausten (LAW-stun) says it’s an open-and-shutter case.  “Back in May, we had a photographer from California that was staying at the Courtyard Marriott,” Chief Lausten says. “When he checked in with all of his equipment, one of his bags didn’t make it up to his room and he reported it lost or stolen. On July 4th, he sent me an email that said he’d seen a Craigslist ad that had what he believed was his equipment for sale by somebody from Sioux City.” La Vista police detectives posed as buyers and contacted the seller.

“Detectives had an idea this might be our victim’s property and asked the suspect to send us the serial numbers so we could make sure it wasn’t stolen,” Lauston says. “He sent us the serial numbers, we verified it was the stolen property. The suspect still wanted to come down and make the sale. He showed up in La Vista with the stolen camera equipment and he was taken into custody.” The suspect is identified as Keegan Ingram of Sioux City and the chief says Ingram has his version of events.

“His story was that he’d bought that from somebody else, so this may’ve been the second or third time this property had been sold,” Lauston says. “We don’t know exactly who stole it but we know who had possession of it.” The camera equipment is valued at four-thousand dollars.

(Radio Iowa)