Stolen Wii

My daughter's bf had his Wii console stolen in a residential burglary. I'm wondering if the unit could be traced if it ever goes out onto the network. It had a few downloadable games in it's memory (along with transaction dates, account ID, unit serial numbers ??)
Comments? Suggestions?
My experience with crimes like this is the police come over, do a report and give you reference info for your insurance claim. Then do very little to actually investigate.

 

Yeah, if they have the intelligence required to go after it, it's certainly traceable. He might consider contacting Nintendo and informing them that the system was stolen. Of course if it doesn't go on the network it's untraceable, but it's likely that who ever ends up with it won't know it's stolen.

 

100% correct. It's not just a lack of know-how, but they just don't have the time or manpower to investigate a stolen Wii. Even if it was a car that was stolen, they never go out and actually look for it... if they happen to come across it, great. I recently saw something on one of those 60 minutes type of investigative shows, where they "dropped" new iPods and then taped and followed the people that picked 'em up. They contacted Apple saying they new who had it, and where they were, but Apple said they couldn't do anything about it. Even if the iPod serial number was registered with Apple (for warranty reasons) they still said "we don't have the resources to look up the legal owner or to track lost/stolen Ipods". Unfortunately, I think the Wii people will say the same thing. "It's not our problem...."

 

Thanks for the replies. I looked into it further. Nintendo does log network activity including IP addresses. To trace a stolen unit a LE agency must subpoena Nintendo to provide those logs then subpoena the ISP to get names and addresses. Long haul for one lousy Wii but it can be done. It would take some aggressive and diligent law enforcement to solve this felony burglary.