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charlotte_northlake_mall_store.jpg
Dear God... there's a family stuck inside that store! :eek:
 
Surprised it took someone this long to pull this off!

happens all the time at apple and all retail jobs. didnt mr post on the london one last year that made the papers. the employee even had a promising music career and decided to steal devices etc.

its called shrink.

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This raises a question for me. As with the looting in London last year, if someone steals an iphone, ipad, etc, surely the serial number would identify it as a stolen unit, and you wouldn't be able to activate it. So (and this is my reason for asking), if you were to inadvertently buy a stolen item off eBay, where do you stand..? I'd like to buy my wife a 2nd hand iPad (to stop her hogging mine! :D), but am really worried that I'd end up having it confiscated when I tried to restore it. And yes, I know that in all probability, most iPads on eBay aren't stolen, but it would be just my luck..

Does anyone have any experience of such a situation..? What did Apple do..?

apple work with positive intent in mind. they won't block any of the devices, however the cell networks might if they were carrier locked devices.


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my big q is why do so many devices in such a short period. dumb thief. either way he got what was coming to him, stealing is real low.
 
Dear God... there's a family stuck inside that store! :eek:

I can think of worse places :p

Maybe they are the theives?

Hmm, since this site is MacRumors I presume that the theft of 25 iPhones from the Charlotte NC store is merely a rumour?
 
This raises a question for me. As with the looting in London last year, if someone steals an iphone, ipad, etc, surely the serial number would identify it as a stolen unit, and you wouldn't be able to activate it. So (and this is my reason for asking), if you were to inadvertently buy a stolen item off eBay, where do you stand..? I'd like to buy my wife a 2nd hand iPad (to stop her hogging mine! :D), but am really worried that I'd end up having it confiscated when I tried to restore it. And yes, I know that in all probability, most iPads on eBay aren't stolen, but it would be just my luck..

Does anyone have any experience of such a situation..? What did Apple do..?

There are many ways to activate it, some involve changing the Device ID, others involve having a job at an Apple store and simply making those Devices IDS disappear, or better yet, mark them as stolen, others involve the black market, others yet involve going to AT&T and telling them you bought the iPhone overseas or whatever, and having them activate it. there is ALWAYS a way around anything.
 
Every unit has a unique UDID. I would think Apple knows what batch went where and a few minutes looking threw their records would yield the UDIDs of the stolen devices. My guess is, soon as one is activated or it hits an Apple server for anything, Apple will be able to locate it and eventually it will be traced back to the perpetrator of the crime.

This. Not sure if anything has changed since back when I sold cell phones, but the UDID's were tracked and they had to be registered on the carriers system to work. (Back then you had to call in but today I assume its done via computer).
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Apple won't hold end users whom bought a phone from this guy responsible.
 
Every unit has a unique UDID. I would think Apple knows what batch went where and a few minutes looking threw their records would yield the UDIDs of the stolen devices. My guess is, soon as one is activated or it hits an Apple server for anything, Apple will be able to locate it and eventually it will be traced back to the perpetrator of the crime.
If that is so, then why won't the carriers do that for individuals who have their phones stolen? Is it going to take lawsuits or criminal proceedings against them to make this happen? It's not like it would cost the carriers huge sums of money to keep a list of banned UDIDs.
 
Am I the only person who was initially shocked at the figure of $16,000 for only 25 iPhones?


Then I realised my maths wasn't too great lol
 
Don't worry, mate, you'll get your one phone call.

Now, I know you're angry at getting caught, but try not to grip the phone too tight, won't you...?
 
Stealing them is easy. My guess is that he was "selling" them to his friends just faking the transaction. They were probably in on it and kicked back some money... Once, I had a neighbor who was a "real" '68 and he told me stories of his wild days where friends of his were working in stores as cashers and they loaded up the whole cart and walked out paying for 10% until the casher was fired - and then the next applied for the job. Back then, it was rather called freeloading... there were no cameras around at that time and it was hard to prove. Nowadays, stealing electronics comes with the downfall that - theoretically - they are traceable. Now, if Apple can find their 25 phones, I just have one stupid question: Why the heck can they not find customers' stolen phones for free then? Oh, right, because replacing that with new iPhones means business... :cool:
 
If that is so, then why won't the carriers do that for individuals who have their phones stolen? Is it going to take lawsuits or criminal proceedings against them to make this happen? It's not like it would cost the carriers huge sums of money to keep a list of banned UDIDs.

Too true. I had four Macs stolen and they had two copies of Adobe CS3 on them (it was a while ago). CS3 allowed two machines to use the same code but in order to use a third machine, you had to "de-commission" one of the other two over the internet. Each time you launched CS3 it checked over the internet to see if your licence was valid and that there were only two in play.

When I reported the loss to Adobe, in order to get new Licence Codes (given that, after re-installing CS3, it still showed my stolen machines as commissioned), I asked if they would be keeping an eye out for an IP address that had booted up and checked the old Licence Code over the internet.

I forget what they said, but it sounded suspiciously like "Nah."

The thieves also stole my car keys - and car - and a week later that car was used in a stabbing, yet Adobe could have said to the police well in advance... "Hey, check out this IP, they're using stolen computers."

And... it still takes three days for a cheque to clear. Just goes to show you that technology is capable of a whole lot more than those in charge of it allow it to deliver.
 
I'm sorry, Charlotte has really built itself up in the last several years, but this is astonishing, and disappointing.

What the heck does this have to do with Charlotte? One moron does something and you are suggesting it says something about the whole city? Seriously?
 
find my iphone(s)?

These were service replacement phones and were not active at the time they left the store so that wouldn't work.

It wouldn't be that hard to do. One or two slipped in pockets in baggy jeans or getting friends to come in for "appointments" and then not ringing up the replacement etc.

Employee games like this are the most common form of theft in retail. Another version is discounts that someone really shouldn't get like ringing up someone as a student when you know they are not.

Or the kid I fired when I worked for Godiva for giving away dipped strawberries to cute girls and then claiming they didn't sell and he trashed them. He also gave out tons of chocolates from the piece case etc. Or would claim that whole new boxes of pieces were actually expired and take them home and not trash them. He didn't consider that we had cameras all over the store and saw what he was doing.
 
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