Apple Store crimes in Berkeley and Los Gatos

The Berkeley Apple Store

The latest in an occasional AppleInsider series, looking at the world of Apple-related crime.

Police say multiple suspects carried out a theft of the Apple Store in Berkeley, Calif., the first week of December, in which more than 40 iPhones were stolen. According to CBS News San Francisco, the thieves wore all-black clothing and fled the scene in a white SUV.

A crime roundup in the San Jose Mercury News listed three separate incidents of individuals attempting to use stolen credit cards at the Apple Store in Los Gatos, Calif., within the period of a few days.

Police in the U.K. have arrested three people, including a 14-year-old boy, for the theft of a cache of iPhones from the Apple Store at Meadowhall in Sheffield.

The total value was approximately 17,000 pounds, the equivalent of about $21,600 in U.S. dollars. The Star reports authorities were able to track two of the stolen iPhones, leading to the arrest of the three at an area McDonald’s.

Everyone knows there’s a lot of retail crime. The question is, how organized is it?

The National Retail Federation, in early December, retracted a claim it had previously made about organized retail crime comprising nearly half of all inventory losses in 2021, Reuters reported.

The industry lobbying group, a spokesperson told the news agency, had attributed the claim to Ben Dugan, former president of the advocacy group Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail, who had testified to Congress that organized retail crime’s annual losses were $45 billion.

“NRF data from its annual Retail Security Survey indicates that the percentage of shrink attributed to external theft, including organized retail crime, has largely remained around 36% since 2015,” the Reuters report said.

Police in Montgomery County, Md., responded to a domestic incident in November, but when they arrived at the home of the man in question, they “found piles of Apple laptops, iPhones, AirPods, and other stolen items just sitting in his living room.” Several apartment building key fobs, as well as weapons, were also found in the home.

According to Montgomery Daily Voice, the items were linked to a series of burglaries in the area between June and November. The man was charged with multiple burglary and domestic violence-related offenses, the report said.

Attorney Beth Bourdon posted to X that after her daughter’s iPhone 15 was stolen and the daughter marked it as lost/stolen and filed an insurance claim, the thieves texted her a series of warnings and threats.

Screenshots posted by Bourdon showed one text came from someone calling themselves the “AT&T Recycling Team,” requesting that the phone owner sign out of her Apple ID, “so that we can clear the data and restore the factory settings.”

Another text came from “Apple Store Pay,” claiming that someone was trying to use Apple Pay in China with the iPhone. Another message took on a more threatening tone, threatening to auction the phone and all of its data on the black market. Another text had the scammer threatening to harm themselves.

A courier in Turkey was arrested in November for stealing 33 iPhones, worth about $30,000, rather than making his assigned delivery. The man also, per the report, used the proceeds from the theft to buy a car for his girlfriend.

According to Mashable Middle East, Turkey is notorious for its high taxes on iPhones, leading to a large black market in the goods. In 2018, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a boycott of Apple products, in retaliation for Trump-era trade policies.

A thief broke a window at the Verizon Store in Pelham, N.Y., on December 8 and stole two iPhones, The Pelham Examiner reported. The outlet published a picture of the glass, which was temporarily replaced with a sheet of particle board.

A New York woman had her AirPods snatched right from her ears while waiting she waited for a subway train in Queens in the first week of December. According to LIC Post, three people approached the 27-year-old woman, grabbed the AirPods, and ran off.