I think what a lot of people are missing is that the items were (most likely) recovered because the pawn shop was doing its due diligence. This article (http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2014-07-13/news/fl-pawn-sto...) mentions that when an item is bought, the pawn show puts information about that item in a database that law enforcement has access to. The author also didn't HAVE to pay to get her laptop back. She mentions that she could have had the police seize it as evidence, but then she would have to wait for the resolution of the case to get it back. She paid for the privilege of getting her laptop back sooner.