From the Wrong Side of the Record

I have a criminal record. Multiple felonies, prison time, and a trail of mistakes that covers the better part of two decades. I'm not going to explain it away or dress it up. It's real, it's mine, and I own every line of it.

This is the story of what happened next, and why SafeOrStolen exists.

I was raised in a home built on faith. In 1991 my family, my father Edward, my mother Patricia, my sister April and I, began seven years of missionary work across seven countries. We carried Bibles, built friendships, and served communities on several continents. Those years were supposed to be the foundation of who I became.

When I came home, I lost my way. The years between 2006 and 2020 hold the record of it: controlled substances, theft, and choices that put me in prison more than once. I've completed every sentence, every day of community custody, every fine. I won't pretend the record isn't there. For a long time the distance between the boy who crossed oceans to serve people and the man whose name was in court files felt too wide to cross.

Then I met Glen.

Glen Thomure was a disabled man with a generous heart. Someone he trusted gave him a tablet as collateral, and he took it in good faith. He had no way of knowing it was stolen. When police ran the serial number, Glen was arrested, booked and charged. He lost his home. He lost his car. His relationship fell apart. His savings went to legal costs.

Glen died in a nursing home in Shelton, Washington, without ever recovering from what followed that one moment.

He wasn't a criminal. He was caught in a gap: ordinary people had no quick way to check whether something was stolen before they accepted it, bought it, or sold it. There was no check to run. There was just a record with his name on it.

I knew that world. I'd lived on both sides of it. Glen's story settled on me, and I couldn't put it down.

A stolen item that reaches the secondhand market doesn't stop at one victim. The buyer loses their money when police take it back. Someone like Glen ends up facing charges he never saw coming. Families take the hit. Trust between neighbors wears thin when nobody can tell what's legitimate.

I'd been part of that chain. I finally understood that the most useful thing I could do with what I knew was help break it.

SafeOrStolen is built on a simple idea: when buyers check before they pay, stolen goods get harder to sell. When an owner reports a theft on the site, the next person who checks that serial number sees it. Each check makes the market for stolen property a little smaller.

I founded SafeOrStolen in 2017 to answer one question: what if anyone could find out, in a few seconds, whether something was reported stolen before they touched it?

I spent four years learning to build it properly under the mentorship of Brian Haung, founder of CaSoft Seattle. I incorporated the company in Arizona in 2025 and launched the live site.

Today you can enter a phone's IMEI, a car's VIN or plate, or the serial number on a gun, bike, laptop or tool. SafeOrStolen searches its own theft reports and public web results, plus police firearm theft records for guns, a national stolen-bicycle registry for bikes, and Arizona stolen-vehicle records for Arizona VINs and plates. The result tells you reported stolen, possible match, or no report found in the records searched, and lists every source. You can see the full list on the data sources page.

Most people who fight theft do it from the outside, reading reports and guessing what the problem looks like.

I built SafeOrStolen from inside the wreckage.

I know how stolen property moves. I know how easily someone without resources, someone exactly like Glen, can get tangled up in it through no fault of their own. I know the human cost because I contributed to it and then watched what it did. That isn't abstract for me. It's the reason this site exists.

The irony isn't lost on me. A man once convicted of possessing stolen property is now building the check meant to stop that from happening to someone else. I don't run from that. It's the most honest thing I've done with my life.

I'm the founder and CEO of SafeOrStolen. I live in Peoria, Arizona. I'm a Christian, a father, and someone who has buried people he loved: my father, my brother Matt, my friend Glen, and most recently my sister April, whose memory is in everything I'm still working toward.

My background check is public. I've said so openly, and I'm dealing with every outstanding matter with full accountability. Being upfront isn't a slogan for me. It's what the product is supposed to do, and it's the standard I hold myself to.

What I want is simple: checking a used item before you buy it should be as ordinary as checking the weather. Nobody should lose everything the way Glen did because a check didn't exist in time.

Glen Thomure lost everything because this didn't exist. I've spent years building it, and I'll spend the rest of my working life making sure his story doesn't become anyone else's.

That's who I am now.