I stole over 100 textbooks (almost 3,000 lbs of books) from a public library when I was a senior in high school

It was about 2006 and I was 18 yo. A few friends of mine and I worked at a Borders book store. A former employee told us she was doing this at her local library. From what I remember, she would look at the library's online catalog, write down the textbook's call number, and then go find the book. Then, she would take the book to an out of sight area in the library and rip out the Dewey Decimal cataloging tag at the base of the spine, a few random pages, and then toss the book in her backpack. If the police or library employee stopped her, she would just tell them to look for "Textbook XYZ" by "ABC" author. If they couldn't find it, she'd say maybe she made a mistake and then leave. In reality the book was in her bag. She said she made quite a bit of money doing this. She'd look for college-level textbooks that were in good condition and held their value well.<br><br>Well, I was a poor high school student and I wanted to go to college but didn't have any money. I had no idea whether this was legal or not and I didn't care. I was in the library quite a bit doing homework, studying, etc. So I just started with my usual subjects I was taking at school: Organic Chemistry, Psychology, Calculus, Physics, etc. The school district had a huge collection of textbooks. Per title, I'd usually find about 4-8 books per subject. Sometimes more, sometimes less.<br><br>A few friends of mine thought this was a great idea too. So we started stashing as many books as we could away in our cars, backpacks, etc. One day, my friend asked his dad to help us move the books to my house. His dad asked why we needed the car, where did the books come from, etc. My friend told him the truth and he was like, "You know that's a felony, right?" The father didn't love the idea, but he helped us move the books.<br><br>The average textbook weighs about 4 lbs. We probably had 700-1000 books. We stored them in a large room above my parent's garage (accessed by a pull-down staircase). I don't think we ever got caught because we were always bringing various books into the library to study or read. So the employees mostly knew us. We'd also volunteer for the library book sales as well. That's probably where we jacked most of the books.<br><br>I didn't get caught until I sold about 200 (I think) of the books online. I used to be on Half.com and they needed your real address because they'd send you a postcard in the mail with a confirmation code. I sold about $8,000 worth of books (going cheap) and then received a call from the local police department. They said I had to turn myself in for felony grand theft. I think the felony was because the total amount I stole was just over $10,000. I don't know how they found out I sold the books (maybe Half had access to this information), but they were spot on: I had the books, I took the books, I sold the books. I hired an attorney and he got the DA to reduce the charges because the police didn't have any evidence that I stole the books from the library. I had to do a few weekends in jail and 30 days of house arrest. I also had to pay a $2000 fine and get 500 hours of community service. The community service lasted about 8 months and the house arrest was probably one of the most boring things I ever endured. I think I was able to sell about $5,000 more in books before I got caught. I used all of the money for college and some to purchase a Jeep Cherokee.<br><br>In Hind sight, it was an absolutely horrible idea. I almost ended up doing 5-10 years in jail/prison, I probably cost the library system hundreds of thousands of dollars (not including the books we probably ruined), and it delayed my life by about a year. Of all my friends who did this with me, only two of us went to college. One graduated with a STEM degree and the other became a police officer. I graduated college, got a graduate degree, and I'm now doing well in my career.<br><br>Edit: Wow. I sold all of the books in 2008. Apparently, I got away with a lot more than I thought. I (alone) probably had close to 1,500 books that I sold to various people. Doing some rough math, I (alone) was able to get around $40,000 to $60,000 in total (I sold them cheap to make them go away faster). This was all college-level books; 99.5% of them were brand new. I think I probably (alone) stole well over 3,000 lbs of books. If I were able to get away with 60,000 in today's dollars, that would have probably been worth over 70,000 back in 2008.<br><br>Edit 2: I'm also surprised that this blew up. Most of my confessions got 1-5 upvotes. This one has significantly more commenters than any of my other confessions as well. Thank you all for the kind words and sentiments.<br><br>Edit 3: I understand some people have been using profanity in this thread. Please remember: this is a public subreddit. If you wish to use profanity, you can message me directly. I'll remove everyone who uses profanity so that this thread doesn't get locked down.