Although Research In Motion hasn’t done too well with their first foray into the tablet space with the BlackBerry Playbook, it would appear that some opportunist thief now has a large quantity of Playbooks on their hands to get rid off thanks to stealing a consignment of 22 pallets of the tablets the other day.

The guys over at Slash Gear are reporting by way of the Herald Bulletin, a consignment of the 7-inch slates worth a cool $1.7 million was stolen en-route to Ontario, Canada whilst the driver of the vehicle took a rest break.

Apparently the dive was away from the vehicle for roughly an hour as he took a break at the Pilot Travel Center off State Road 67 west of Indiana 69, in Chesterfield and on returning found that his truck containing 22 pallets of BlackBerry tablets had been stolen.

Word is the cops have no clues as to who stole the truck and apparently the BlackBerry Playbook consignment didn’t carry any tracking devices. The police have contacted the FBI and according to officer Mike Milbourn, in his experience, these types of stolen goods are usual taken to the Miami area.

According to the Slash Gear guys as far as they are aware, Research In Motion doesn’t brand their haulage with ‘BlackBerry On Board’ and thus this was probably a blind theft, meaning the thief or thieves basically didn’t know what the truck was carrying.

So in the run up to Christmas if you happen to get offered a BlackBerry Playbook for next to nothing, you might find that it is part of this stolen consignment, and let’s be honest here, to shift the RIM slates the thieves would have to let them go for almost nothing as even RIM couldn’t sell that many at the price they were asking.

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