A house burglar was caught after a webcam on the owner's computer recorded images of him carrying out the raid.
Stills of serial raider Benjamin Park, 19, of Cambridge, were sent to an email address so even when he stole the computer, the images could be found.
Police said it was a "brilliant idea" of software engineer Duncan Grisby, who set it after a previous burglary.
Park was given an 11-month jail term by magistrates in Cambridge on Tuesday after admitting burglary.
"I was burgled three years ago and was annoyed at the time because I had thought about setting this system up then, but hadn't got around to it," said Mr Grisby.
"I was relieved it did what I'd intended it to when I was burgled again. It was nice to catch him in the act - but it didn't stop him from stealing my things. The burglary was a real violation of my private space but at least he got caught. I just wish he'd got a longer sentence."
Mr Grisby said the system was easy to set up. "There are lot of products for Windows that you can use to do this - though I used some free software and wrote some extra software myself."
Police described Mr Grisby's idea as "absolutely brilliant".
"The webcam was set up in his computer and began filming once it registered motion. It captured every movement Park made," said Det Sgt Alan page, head of Cambridgeshire Police Burglary Squad.
"At one point he stared into the computer as if it might be making a noise or something to make him suspicious. He then stole the computer but it didn't matter because Mr Grisby had set it up so that as it was recording it was sending the images to an email address. When the break-in was discovered Mr Grisby simply gave us the email address and we were able to watch several minutes of footage and say, `That's Ben Park'.
"Mr Grisby is an extremely bright man. He'd set this up because he'd been burgled some years ago and the quality was superb. It was better than a burglar alarm and when Park initially denied breaking in to the property we were simply able to show him the footage."
Magistrates heard Park, who has more than 13 previous convictions for theft, had stolen computer equipment and other property with a value of nearly
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