What do thieves do when they steal a laptop?

Hi, I recently left my macbook pro in a taxi. I know so utterly stupid of me. The next day i went to the police and told them where i got the taxi, what time, colour and type of taxi etc and gave them the serial number of it.

You see I had Find My iPhone installed on it. However it still says no one has connected to the internet on my laptop. (It only shows the location once someone is connected to the internet). I also had Dropbox installed which has a similar feature like this, it shows the last ip address on the computer but it says none has been used since before i left it in the taxi.

My question is, what do thieves normally do when they steal a laptop? Do they just wipe the whole system (which would cause Find My iPhone not to work?) Should i give up hope?

Well yes I'm sure they would wipe the system, or hell they could even just swap the hard drives

Depends on how smart they are, but yes they would wipe it if they are smart but there are some who didn't think far enough to do that (or didn't know how to do it).

There isn't really much you can do but here have a funny video about someone who got his mac stolen and got it back

They can steal your identity & important info you might have on the laptop. Some try to pawn them or sell them & these people usually get caught.other strip them for parts or just keep them for themselves

Actually a majority of them do not wipe the system originally… Some take them straight to pawn shops or sale them to sources that they know that can get rid of them… The sources are usually smart enough to whipe the system and reinstall the operating system.

Usually the stolen laptop is sold super cheap to get it gone then whoever buys it whipes it and resells at a normal price.

First check with the cab company to see if it was turned in. Your next best shot at getting it back is to check local pawn shops. If you still have your receipt that will help prove that it is yours as it should have the serial number on it.pawn shops see it all the time so just keep checking back. Hope you find it because even though i'm a pc user, i know that's a lot of money and i'm sure has things on there that are invaluable.

Call the taxi place to see if the driver turned it in?

Call around the local pawn shops to see if it got pawned?

Some people are not smart and think finders keepers and they will use the laptop. Does it have a password? Maybe that's why someone couldn't log in or it might of died.