Apple’s Find My iPhone feature has once again had a hand in returning an iPhone to its rightful owner after it had been stolen, and thankfully this time the victim decided to turn to the police instead of trying to personally solve the case.
The victim, whose name has been withheld, told the Pittsburgh police that three robbers held him at gunpoint, which later turned out to be a pellet gun, and forced him to hand over his wallet, PIN number, and iPhone. After the confrontation he quickly called police and cancelled all of his credit cards, but he didn’t stop there.
Later on in the day, the victim decided to use MobileMe’s Find My iPhone feature to attempt to hunt down the perpetrators, assuming they weren’t savvy enough to realize the iPhone’s capabilities and simply shut the device off. As it turns out, they weren’t. The Pittsburgh Police were able to apprehend the suspects at a local restaurant after the victim had tracked their location.
The three suspects remain in police custody and they will be charged with two counts each of access device fraud, conspiracy, receiving stolen property and possessing instruments of crime.
The moral of the story is that crime really doesn’t pay, especially when you are trying to steal an iPhone.
Hi, all the article posted in this blog is based on which time zone? Is it GMT+0 or GMT+something.
For example the article above was posted on August 31st, 2009, 10.37 am
Currently my time zone is GMT+8 (September 1st, 2009, 2.57am)
Thanks.
GMT-7
Who gives a monkeys what time zone it is!!
+1
so do you have to load any software to the phone before its stolen? my girlfriends phone was just stolen and im wondering if this will work for us.
my phone was also stolen this weekend and i’m wondering if it’s possible to sign up for mobile me after the fact to try and find it…
As far as I know, the software must be enabled on the iPhone before using the website, which means that if your phone was stolen and you didn’t have it enabled, you are probably out of luck.
Here are some links for further reading:
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/06/17/find-my-iphone-how-to-set-it-up/
http://www.apple.com/mobileme/setup/iphone_ipod.html