First Sale of Three Stolen Computers

The first successful sale of the stolen school computers is the moment the boys’ plan begins to pay in cash—and the moment the risk becomes impossible to ignore. After a nighttime break-in and five unsuccessful attempts to find a buyer, Lukas, Julius, and Sanchez sell three computers with flat-screen monitors for 800 euros. The buyer’s warning, the sharply reduced price, and the decision to reserve part of the money for the absent Gino shape the sale as both a windfall and a precarious bargain.

From break-in to merchandise

The computers had been taken from the boys’ school during a Saturday-night burglary. Julius first produced a lock pick, boasting that it could open doors, cars, and cellars, but Sanchez answered by throwing down a large key ring. Julius recognized that it included a key to their school and put the pick away. The key made the plan practical: Sanchez could unlock the gate, and the boys could enter without having to rely on Julius’s improvised tool.

The approach to the building still felt exposed. The school stood in the middle of a residential area, where there were no clubs or pubs to explain why anyone would be hanging around at that hour. Sanchez had kicked out the lamp by the school gate, leaving the boys in darkness there, but Lukas worried about guards, cleaners, motion sensors, and cameras. At the side entrance to the seventh-year wing, they paused; the route took them past the caretaker’s room and the cleaning-supply rooms, precisely where someone might be working. Sanchez unlocked the door before Lukas could reconsider.

Inside, the search turned from uncertainty to opportunity when Sanchez spotted unopened cartons on shelves, with computers and monitors pictured on the packaging. Lukas estimates that there were about forty. He climbed onto a step stool and passed the computers down one by one; Sanchez and Julius received them and set them on the floor. The speed and scale of the discovery helped make the theft seem, for a moment, like an easy route to a great deal of money. Selling the machines proved much harder.

A market that keeps refusing

By the time the boys try the sale recorded here, they have approached five shops without success. Lukas argues that they should abandon the effort and hide or discard the computers rather than risk their discovery. Julius resists: if they keep trying, he insists, someone will eventually buy them. Sanchez also favors continuing, because otherwise the whole operation will have been for nothing. Their disagreement exposes the gap between the apparent simplicity of taking the computers and the difficulty of converting stolen goods into money.

At the electronics buy-and-sell shop, Julius first tries to persuade the man behind the counter that three computers with monitors are worth 1,500 euros. The man refuses to engage with the pitch, calls into a small back room, and turns his attention to his phone. When Julius presses him, Sanchez pulls him away and puts the computer back in the sports bag. The failed approach leaves the boys outside again, waiting and trying to decide whether to keep going. Julius smokes one cigarette after another; Lukas points out that this is their fifth unsuccessful shop and again proposes giving up. Sanchez shrugs and sides with Julius. They continue rather than abandon the computers.

The buyer names the danger

At the next negotiation, Lukas claims that the boys are twenty. The answer comes out abruptly, and he recognizes that the age is an exaggeration; he thinks that saying he was sixteen might have made the men send them away. The lie does not make their appearance convincing. One of the men points out that a large number of computers were stolen from a school only a few days earlier and that three students have now arrived with brand-new machines. His suspicion is direct: he asks whether they expect him to believe the computers are not stolen.

The boys deny the connection. Sanchez says they are not from a school, and Julius claims that the computers came from someone’s brother. The men have already exchanged words and watched them closely, however, and the offer that follows makes clear that the buyer is willing to proceed only on his own terms. When Sanchez asks for 1,500 euros for all three computers and their flat-screen monitors, the man in the corner laughs at the price and inspects the computer Sanchez has set down. He offers 800 euros in cash, without a receipt, and tells them to leave and never come back. The sum is far below their demand, but it is an actual offer after five refusals. The boys step outside to confer and return to accept it.

Cash, division, and the unresolved risk

The buyer counts out eight green banknotes and lays them on the counter. As Julius takes the money, the man says he will remember their faces and insists that what happened in the shop never be discussed. Julius counts the notes and grins; Sanchez and Lukas leave the computers on the counter. Julius immediately asks whether the men also want five more computers that the boys have at home. The answer is a firm demand that they leave the machines and get out. The successful transaction is therefore bounded: the buyer purchases these three, not an ongoing supply, and makes clear that he does not want to see them again.

Outside, the money feels newly tangible to the boys. Sanchez passes the bundle around and compares the 800 euros with what he had earned over two months selling drugs in Hellersdorf. Julius then insists that the proceeds are not all his and sets out an equal division: 200 euros each for himself, Lukas, Sanchez, and Gino. Gino is not present because he is under house arrest, but Julius says he should receive the same share and takes responsibility for bringing it to him later. Lukas says this arrangement is obvious to him, and Sanchez agrees. The split preserves the group’s claim to shared participation even in Gino’s absence, while the buyer’s warning and the remaining computers keep the apparent jackpot shadowed by exposure and unfinished business.