I have a friend that owns a small local pawn shop here. He said they’ve been using something called LeadsOnline.com for all purchases that come in. All pawnshops are suppose to be using it in the area and it allows them to work directly with the police. Basically someone comes in with a ring to pawn/sell. During the buying process the shop gets all her information, copy of her license, phone etc and enters this into the system. They also get any serial of the ring, any markings if any and take pictures and upload this data into the system.

Now if the original person files a report for the stolen ring, to the police, they can also enter their info into the LeadsOnline site and pictures if she has them and have them show up as stolen items. The police now have the option to Send our an alert of the missing ring to all shops to be on the look out with pictures attached or they cansearch the entire database for gold diamond rings which search all data put in by pawnshops across the state and probably find that joes pawn shop, has a ring that someone pawned to him that matches perfectly 3 days ago. He’s been hooked into it about 2 years now I think. Every item that comes in now is imputed into this database with searchable descriptions site wide to search all other pawn shops using it. If someone try’s to bring in a stolen MacBook Pro or iPhone that police have already entered into LeadsOnline, the pawn shop will check it and see it’s been reported stolen by police who imputed into leads a week ago and the serials match. They use it for more than just items. I believe they use it to track scrap metal sales as well.