File the criminal complaint, don't wait. As the Judge mentions, the complaint should be filed against the passenger who removed your property from an area designated for carry-on stowage. I think the police would treat someone removing your baggage from a baggage carousel such that it resulted in the loss of your baggage as theft. The event you describe seems similar. How seriously they will investigate is another matter entirely, but airport police may be quite interested in possible baggage crimes in their airport.
Contact your insurance company, in many instances homeowner policies will extend to cover the loss of personal property due to theft. This will not apply if you do not have a property rider on your policy. Renter's insurance can also cover property, depending on the policy.
The events described seem bizarre. We have a passenger who found an "abandoned" piece of carry-on luggage that was stowed in an area designated for storage of same. A member of the flight crew then accepted, during boarding, this same piece of carry-on luggage as "abandoned" and removed the item from the plane. If I found an "abandoned" roller in the overhead bin, would Lufthansa just let me remove it and accept my word that it was abandoned? What about the other "abandoned" laptops, purses, etc. that were also stowed under seats as the plane boarded? What questions did the crew member ask the passenger before accepting the story? It would seem to me that there must have been more to the interchange between the passenger who "found" your laptop and the crew member who accepted it. More, perhaps, than the OP is aware of. Given, what seems on its face, to be rather cavalier behavior by the crew member who accepted your laptop as "abandoned", you should also push this complaint as far up the Lufthansa chain as possible.
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