The representation of the SPIEGEL article is an insolence and is not of good taste. And the whole thing escalates when even the television made a show about the story. Would have been fun if it happened in the USA. There would have been helicopters circling over my house with a live TV broadcast (like in the movie "Larry Flint").

You wanna know the truth?
On wednesday the 24th of august 10 XeDK boxes (XBOX 360 devkits) got stolen from the MS-Europe storage depot which is operated by Bertelsmann Logistic Group in Dueren (Germany). On Friday 26th august, 7 boxes got offered to the SmartXX(info) team and we were shocked but however said "yes, we gonna take 4 pieces" (we still couldn't fully believe it) Due to our past long-term good co-operation ("hate love") with Microsoft in most diverse interests, we then took contact directly with Microsoft: Together with MS we decided to show pictures of the XeDK boxes on saturday the 27th of august with the purpose to lower the "emotional" value of the boxes (for a future theft) and also to try to create a market for it.

This attempt was successful and on the 6th of september 14 more XeDKs were stolen. Due to an internal misfortune the theft has been observed but the pursuit failed. Naturally this incident was not indicated at the police.

Due to a misunderstanding within MS - only a few ppl were well-informed because we assumed there was an informant within Microsoft - two of my mails with text like "hey they got something" got forwarded to the police 'cause the Logistic Center (Bertelsmann) made a report.

Indeed this wasn't true, but not to compromise the investigation team SmartXX turned over the 4 XeDKs.

That's why MS didn't work on the case themself but handed it over to the company "Prevent AG" (www.prevent.ag), which is specialized in such things.

Such a house search on a sunday must one bear - the MS legal department says - in addition I shouldn't take it too seriously (everything can be ironed out with money again, and there is a reason why MS is called M$). It is however already unfortunate that some parts of such a large company doesn't know what the other one does, and certain things are done by higher authorities without demands.

That the police had to search for a long time is also a bloated representation. I think with a mail containing phonenumber and address it's pretty easy to find the sender.

MS and we tried to do everything possible in order to stop the whole case at the police cause the "unknown factor" couldn't help in our covered investigation. Unfortunately that did not succeed. It is however sensational that the police gives interviews about the case but on the other hand is telling our lawyers that it is still an open case and that they can't hand out any documents. Also the seized hardware (laptop, DigiCamera) were not returned yet (have much fun with my vacation photos).

After this actions we decided to post the picture of 3 xboxes on the SmartXX website (but final boxes with all accessories). According to the method: Folded once, a second time will work too.

This time the boxes will be provided with direction-finding transmitters in on monday/tuesday (10./11. October) in order to get 100% security this time. This happened in the factory in China so there is no gap while shipping within the logistic system.

Well not hard to figure if this won't work anymore now. Therefore it was stopped.

We of SmartXX would like to apologize to everyone involved and accused cause we didn't play with open cards.

And to Microsoft I would like to say: "Sure you gonna deny everything, like always. But tell every reporter on the X05 that the thief is already found on the quite. That's "great" cause in an internal instruction "silence" was proclaimed in reference to the case". Well try to disclaim why you are paying my lawyer? Bank vouchers are hard to deny or are they forged documents?

Further we thank the press for the "outstanding" press release, it was pretty "pertinent". Thanks again. Really helped clearing-up of the case. But there seem to be some good reporters. Thanks to golem.de, who gave us a ring (phone call), first stopped the story and posted about it after they talked to us.

This is something you would hope to see from other respectable reporters. Unfortunatly it's not like that. The team SmartXX reserves itself to induce legal steps against the demagogic press. A simple apology will not be enough to dispose this.