The Vancouver Sun reports that the hilarious case of the stolen Apple iMac computer has been resolved — partly. The laptop has been delivered to police, but the guy who turned it in says he didn’t steal it.

A stolen laptop means little to the world, but it became celebrated after a shirtless and heavily tattooed man uploaded pictures of himself to Flickr.com, a picture-sharing website.

The computer, along with five others, was taken from Workspace, a Vancouver company that provides work areas to independent professionals. The pictures of the tattooed man appeared on Workspace’s Flickr website, almost certainly the result of inadvertently pressing the wrong buttons on the stolen machine, which had a built-in webcam.

The story his the ground running. Everyone wanted to get in touch with the man, especially police, to chat with him about how he came to be using a stolen machine and letting the world know he was in possession of it.

As of this morning, the video had been seen 269,773 times and had 359 comments attached to it.

It was all too much. The tattooed man contacted a local TV station Tuesday, and told people there he had no idea the computer was stolen. And that he had bought it from a friend, who had bought it from someone else.

The man is apparently “known to police,” which means he likely has a criminal record or, failing that, has more than once discussed things with the constabulary. Police wouldn’t release his name, but said the man turned the machine in to police while accompanied with his lawyer.

Whether he is guilty or innocent of theft is for the courts to decide, but he certainly has a lot to explain about the sweetness of the deal he got on the machine.

The incident reminds me of a novel published by Anvil Press in 1992 called Stupid Crimes, written by Dennis E. Bolen, also a Vancouverite. His premise was that most crimes are perpetrated by “total, asinine, glazed-eyed stupidity,” as reviewer Eve Drobot said in a Globe and Mail book review.

This sure looks like another example.