When police serve a search warrant for career criminals (e.g. drug dealing, car theft, basically any criminal activity that you can make a decent regular income on) it's SOP to cross-reference serial numbers on expensive stuff that's lying around (power tools, electronics, etc) with the list of serial numbers in their DB of police reports so they can tack on a charge if they get a match. It is absolutely a liability to have a bunch of stolen stuff lying around.