Ok, so I admit that I did not read all 9 pages of this, sorry if I repeat myself - curiously...I have been thru this..and live in SC!
When this happened to me three years ago, I too bought from a local pawnshop here in upstate SC, and it has a giant banner over the two pawn windows that reads "DO NOT PAWN STOLEN ITEMS, YOU WILL BE CAUGHT". Yeah, that should have been my first/last indicator, right? Well, anyway, I got caught up in it, and was able to show no malfeasance on my part, so the cops were cool with it....but I lost the Browning A5. I very successfully sued the family of the person that sold it to the pawnshop in small claims court (the guy was by this point doing time in Prison for this and other stuff)....and 2.5 years later, have yet to recoup a dime of it. One of my childhood friends is by chance a wee-known SC attorney,a and per him, in the state of SC, you can ask for restitution thru the courts (my lawyer-friend took care of this for me). If approved (and it should happen) then once he is out of prison he will have to begin paying the courts system restitution, of which I would eventually receive a portion, probably a bit at a time, until paid (he gets out in 2012). So basically, I expect my $625 expense to be fully repaid by about 2017. That is about $6.50 per month/$78 per year,
