SerialCheck: a free national register for stolen property
How JWWD designed, built and runs a free Australian register that helps people get stolen property back, and stops it being sold on second-hand.
The problem
Thousands of bikes, tools, instruments and phones are stolen in Australia every year, and most never make it back to their owners. Police often recover property but have no way to link it to the person it belongs to.
Meanwhile, anyone buying second-hand on Marketplace or Gumtree has no easy way to check whether what they’re paying for was stolen.
What we built
SerialCheck started as an idea from co-founder Michael Greville, who saw how rarely stolen property finds its way home. JWWD turned that idea into a working national platform, and designs, builds and runs it.
SerialCheck is a free, independent register that anyone in Australia can use:
- Record: owners log serial numbers and photos of their belongings under one free account.
- Flag: if something is stolen, the owner flags it in a minute and a public alert goes up.
- Check: anyone can look up a serial before buying second-hand, with no account needed.
- Reunite: finders and buyers can contact the owner through the platform without either side’s details being exposed.
How it's built
- Laravel with Inertia and Vue 3, server-side rendered. Public pages such as stolen alerts, guides and theft statistics load fast and are fully indexable.
- Privacy by design. Personal details (name, email, phone) and item data (serial numbers, descriptions, purchase details) are encrypted in the database and never shown publicly. Accounts support two-factor authentication.
- AI-assisted item entry. Owners describe an item in plain English, and the platform turns that into a complete, structured listing.
- Filament admin panel for moderation and for handling ownership disputes.
- A scheduled content engine. Guides are queued in a single registry and go live automatically on their publish date, with the sitemap updating to match.
Turning public data into something useful
SerialCheck also publishes its own analysis of ABS Recorded Crime data. It recalculates theft rates per 100,000 people for every state and territory so they can be compared fairly, because the ABS publishes raw counts only. The analysis is refreshed each year when new figures are released.
The result
A fast, secure and genuinely useful public service with no fees and no premium tier, built and run end to end by JWWD. It’s a good example of what we do: practical products that solve a real problem and are built to last.
Have an idea for a platform like this? Talk to JWWD.