Question

what is the





meaning of items on the fence

Answer 1

A fence, also known as a receiver, mover/moving man or thiefspawn, is an individual who knowingly buys stolen goods in order to later resell them for profit. The fence acts as a middleman between thieves and the eventual buyers of stolen goods who may not be aware that the goods are stolen. As a verb, the word describes the behaviour of the thief in the transaction: The burglar fenced the stolen radio. This sense of the term came from thieves' slang, first attested c. 1700, from the notion of such transactions providing a defence against being caught.[1][2]

The fence is able to make a profit with stolen merchandise because he/she is able to secretly pay thieves a very low price for "hot" goods that cannot be easily sold on the open markets. The thieves who patronize the fence are willing to accept a low profit margin in order to reduce their risks by instantly "washing their hands" of the black market loot and disassociating themselves from the criminal act that procured it. After the sale, the fence recoups their investment by disguising the stolen nature of the goods (via methods such as repackaging and altering/effacing serial numbers) and reselling the goods as near to the white market price as possible without drawing suspicion. This process often relies on a legal business (such as a pawnshop, flea market or street vendor) in order to "launder" the stolen goods by intermixing them with legally-purchased items of the same type. [3] Fencing is illegal in all countries, but legally proving a violation of anti-fencing laws can be difficult.[4]