Quoted from ripple:

So here is the story. I got a text on Thursday from my wanted to buy ad asking if I wanted to buy a new TMNT with a picture of a moded machine. At first I did not remember about the stolen machine and I replied it was not new but might be interested. He said make an offer and I said maybe 5K. The person said great and he was 3 hours from Boise and would bring it to me on Sunday. This was the fishiest offer I have ever received to buy machine and after a couple of hours I remembered about the stolen machine. Everything lined up from the mods this was the stolen machine. I contacted tigzz and chipscott and confirmed this was the case. I called the Boise police Friday morning and spoke with an officer. He said there was nothing they could do at this point since no crime was committed in Idaho. I said how about we lure the person here and the police pretend to be me on Sunday to recover the machine. He said maybe but I don’t work on Sunday so you would need to talk to someone on Sunday. At this point I decided I would need to be the lead on this or the recovery might not happen. After this point the police were excellent in there response. I stayed in contact with the seller and just acted like it was a normal purchase. The big break at this point is the serial number was tracked down. Now we have a police report and a serial number!
So Sunday comes and I call back the police. The police agree to wait down the road and we will call them as soon as the machine is in the garage. First they are supposed to arrive at 1:00 then they push that back to 2:00 then they push it back to 3:00. At this point the police are changing shifts and a different police team is on standby. Finally they show up. 3 guys in maybe their late 20’s. The seller comes off as pretty nice and harmless but I can not say that for his 2 friends. Just as we are getting the legs on 3 cop cars roll up. I say “ come on in guys “ to the officers. They have 4 officers and proceed with questioning. I couldn’t hear the entire story but basically the seller said “ I have a junk shop in a tiny town and someone stopped in and said they needed gas money. The machine was still strapped to the pallet. He offered them $300 and they took it.”
The police took forever to do everything. I explained 3 times the whole story and mostly sat around for couple of hours hanging out and waiting. No arrests were made and they drove away. I did send pictures to chipscott to see if any were the original thief. It’s pretty amazing these guys didn’t have anything else illegal going on. Their car was searched. Eventually a detective shows up on his day off. I could not talk the police out of taking the machine as evidence and I did have a letter to act as tigzzz agent. The police said the matter was being referred to the prosecutor and it could take months to release the machine.
I want to give a special shout out to my pinball posse. When some voice were literally telling me not to get involved and this could be a risk to me, my pinball posse took time out of their day to stand behind me so I wouldn’t be out manned for those couple of minutes before the police rolled in. I am so happy to be involved in the recovery of this machine and would be happy to help in picking it up from the authorities and getting it to the owner when the time comes.