BS”D
The story about Rabinowitz reminds me of a true story from Hanoch Teller:
A druggie went into the old 47th St Photo with a pair of stolen tefillin. The Chossid behind the counter recognized the name on them, so he acted fast and said that the seller was missing the one for the other arm and therefore all he could pay was five dollars.
The druggie accepted the fiver and was duly reported (the story does not mention if he was arraigned – this was the 80’s when such offenses went unpunished) and the tefillin were returned to their rightful owner.
Same happened to me, but the genius who stole mine tried to sell them in a local shul on Shabbos. As he was but a typical early 90’s emaciated crackhead, it did not take much for people, including an old friend of mine, to get my tefillin away from him. (Even without my name somewhere in the tefillin bag, they were clearly a double set of Chabad tefillin and would have made it back to the Beis Chabad where I davened anyway).
I had already reported the loss to insurance and was misyaesh, and since these were the days of crummy cassette answering machines I barely understood my friend’s message.
Finally he reached me and I got my tefillin back and canceled the claim. They had a problem from day one and had this not happened I would not have had them checked.
Sadly, I sold these tefillin when I went OTD. They were not the best ones and I had always thought of replacing them and leaving them in shul, but I never got around to it and instead ended up selling them to the shul, whose (erev) rav had caused me the tzuris that made me go off.
I now have a new double set.