London man’s iPhone hacked and taunted by thief

The Apple Store on Chestnut Street in San Francisco

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

A tech executive in London whose iPhone was stolen by a mugger over the holidays says the thief taunted him through his Ring camera.

According to The Daily Mail the executive, known only as “Michael,” had the iPhone 15 Pro stolen after a Christmas party, when the thief grabbed the phone as he tried to order an Uber.

The thief, the executive told the paper, had used the phone to “blow” 600 pounds (about $760) on sports gambling apps and Uber credits. Then, Michael woke to the thief “taunting” him through his Ring camera, stating “Michael, Michael.”

He also told the paper that the thief had changed his Gmail password and put his email as the recovery contact, but police told him “geolocating an email address was not possible.”

A student from Vietnam was convicted of breaking into an Apple office in Singapore and stealing products- and was arrested after he returned to the office to return some of the items. According to The South China Morning Post, the student was sentenced to 11 months in jail on one charge each of committing housebreaking, two theft charges, and committing housebreaking to commit an offense.

The Los Angeles Police Department said in December that they recently discovered a cache of “bins and bags full of personal electronic devices,” including iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks. ABC 7 reports police believe the devices were mostly taken from burglaries of homes and cars.

Thieves were spotted on CCTV cameras trying and failing to break into an Apple Store in San Francisco in mid-December, at which point they instead broke into a storage unit at a restaurant belonging to area restauranteur Ken Lowe.

According to The Daily Mail, the theft was of $5,000 worth of seafood and Wagyu beef. It was part of a “crime trifecta” suffered by Lowe, as two of his businesses and his car were all broken into the same week.

A 66-year-old man in Indiana, Pa., had his AT&T account broken into by thieves who later used it to steal $16,000 worth of Apple products. Explore Jefferson PA explains the items included 14 iPhone 15 Pro Maxes and three Apple Watches.

Pennsylvania State Police are investigating, the report said.

A man was arrested in late December for stealing nearly 40 iPads from the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners the previous month. According to St. Louis Public Radio, the accused thief entered a warehouse used by the board to take the devices.

The iPads were used for checking in voters and did not contain sensitive information; they had been remotely disabled once it was known they were missing.

A customer at an Elements Casino in Canada left his iPhone behind at a slot machine in late November, only to find it missing when he returned. Gold Stream Gazette reports the theft was caught on casino surveillance, and Find My iPhone later led to its recovery the following month.

A man and a woman attempted to steal a new iPhone from a warehouse in Coddington, in the U.K., by placing it in a lunchbox. However, according to National World, the two were caught when the lunchbox itself set off a metal detector, and a search found the stolen iPhone.

One of them “bolted” and was quickly caught, and both were ultimately arrested.

Two women in Akron, Ohio, who agreed to an in-person meetup to sell an iPhone were later robbed. According to Cleveland 19, the theft took place in early December, and the two teenage robbers arrived with guns and fled on foot.

Police are searching for the two teenage suspects.