To Catch an iPhone Thief

What do you do when someone steals your iPhone? You track them down at all costs.

We’ve seen some very interesting stories lately of criminals being thwarted by the high-tech capabilities of the things they’ve been stealing, but this story might take the cake in terms of sheer effort.

When an unsuspecting traveler flew into Los Angeles from Cabo San Lucas, he didn’t expect to suddenly find his iPhone 3Gs – you know, the Apple device that doesn’t sound like a feminine product – missing from his pocket. Thanks to the phone’s GPS, though, he was able to track it down to a location, figuring that it had fallen into his seatmate’s open bag.

But nope. Having soon realized that the phone had been stolen and would likely soon be jailbroken and sold on a site like eBay, our hero stepped into action. The phone was a homing device, after all, and all the myriad of applications and sites on the Web designed to interface with the iPhone – like Apple’s Mobile Me – aided the internet in helping to keep track of the phone and the thief.

Law enforcement couldn’t do anything, said the writer, which left only one option: Time to use the internet and Google to track this motherf*cker down. “By stealing my phone, ‘Pinche’ gave me the moral greenlight to stalk the sh*t out of him and take away any sense of privacy he has for the rest of his life … my only option was to keep f*cking with this guy until he returns my iPhone.”

“I wanted him to know, I know where he is, I know who his family members are, I know where he lives, I know who his roommates are, I know who his roommates cousins are, I know what his sister drives, I know where he eats, I know his name, I know his age, his mothers age… anything and everything to prove to this Pinche that he is holding Satan’s cell phone.”

Like I said – talk about sheer effort made in getting your phone back.

Does the story have a happy ending? Well, you’ll have to read the whole thing to find out, but it is one hell of an epic story of vengeance, obsession, and why you should really think before you steal a smartphone with a homing device inside of it.