How does Find My Mac work exactly? My Macbook Pro 13 (2015) was recently stolen. I activated FMM about an hour after the event and two hours later received an update that the machine was erased. Questions:

1) What does this mean exactly? Is this message triggered when the wipe is initiated or after the wipe is completed. Can I reliably infer that the HDD was wiped? What's to prevent the baddie from simply turning off the machine when the wipe is initiated? I'm just trying to understand the possible outcomes here, especially with the data on the drive.

2) The HDD was encrypted with filevault 2. Does this provide effective protection from anyone getting at the data?

3) Is the machine bricked (like an iOS device would be) or can it still be resold as a working computer?
I am assuming that you clicked on the option to "Erase your Mac" when you activated FMM.  If you got a message that the machine was erased, then the drive was erased.

As for the HDD, filevault does offer good protection against the most common of thieves, but nothing is perfect.  Chances are they can't crack the encryption.  However, if you wiped the drive, this is moot.

Is the machine "bricked?"  I don't know.  Did you lock it with a PIN code?  If you didn't, it can still work.  However, if you locked it down with a PIN, you have effectively bricked it.

Now...did you file a police report?