Thieves Tunnel Through Coffee Shop Wall to Steal $500,000 in iPhones From Washington Apple Store

[fdw777]

Goodness....this world is getting worse and worse!!!

 

[ellsworth]

This is the type of stuff you read happening in prisons and between borders.

 

[VietKinh]

I never hear anyone stealing Samsung S23 Ultra phones though.

 

[Mousse]

I am surprised Apple had such a poor security system. Simple Motion detectors in all rooms could have caught the thieves.

Meh. Apple Store backrooms will replace all the drywall with 1/2 metal plates and the 2x4 studs with I-beams.😁 Thieves are gonna need a plasma cutter to gain access to the iPhone.😏 Passive security has fewer weakness than active security. Motion sensor are useless once the knock out the power.

 

[DaveEcc]

I never hear anyone stealing Samsung S23 Ultra phones though.

Well it just happened. First the Samsung folks need to mock it, then Samsung will copy it.

 

[Shmoe]

Johnny 5 unavailable for comment along with Oscar.

 

[Carrotcruncher]

Oh Apple is most certainly able to track these and fully disable these phones remotely. They can really only sell these for parts, cause it will not be a workable phone 📱

Apple won’t block these phones. They’ve got no need to they’ve already sold the devices it’s not a problem for them anymore and besides when these phones get activated these people want to use all the Apple services so Apple are going to make money out of this either way, why would they want to disable phones when there’s money to be made you Gotta think like Tim !

 

[Robert.Walter]

Apple has cleared out its iPhone12 mini stock in this one amazing move...

And got insurance to pay for it as well as a new paint job in the stock room.

 

[cdsapplefan]

Apple won’t block these phones. They’ve got no need to they’ve already sold the devices it’s not a problem for them anymore and besides when these phones get activated these people want to use all the Apple services so Apple are going to make money out of this either way, why would they want to disable phones when there’s money to be made you Gotta think like Tim !

Maybe 🤔 you just glanced at the article, but these phones were stolen and Apple is out $500,000, which I know is pennies 🪙 to them, but no company in the world wants to randomly lose money 💰 like that. Anyways these phones will not be activated regardless of what anyone says

 

[Piscestg]

I hate the fact they left the 🚽 Toilet Seat wide open. No consideration! They could have closed it. 😭😭

I thought the same thing! It appears the thieves were probably men. 🤣

 

[dlopan]

Where are they going to sell the phones? Russia, South America? Parts? Just iphones? weird.
Reminds me of the The Bank Job. Just no pictures of the princess and no real money

 

[davidjschloss]

Hope they catch the thieves. Shouldn't been able to achieve that, just cutting a hole through the wall.

Should they encase the whole building in steel? How would one prevent tunneling from an adjacent property?

 

[nylonsteel]

sad how criminals target aapl stores. $500k loss is a lot

 

[snipper]

Well, it doesn't help that walls in the US are often made of wood and plaster, instead of bricks and morter.

Still, motion sensors are a good addition. Alarm systems have batteries too, these days, and wireless internet.

Also, I assume they are insured against this.

 

[^^BIGMac]

Apple employees still not talking about it at the store…

 

[bookofxero]

Can Apple just lock these phones so they can't be used?

They have the SNs, IMEIs, etc, of all of them. They will still probably end up on Facebook Marketplace and sold as unopened units. Display units used to have a separate part number - not sure if that is still the case.

Yep, I'm sure they have the IMEI manifest of what iPhones they received in the store and can just reconcile that with whatever stock they have remaining for the blacklist.

Just like any 3rd party sale, should always verify IMEI.

You think a clueless parent trying to get a phone in the cheap for their kid is going to know or even think to do that?

Wow, and I thought people coming through the ceiling of the remote stock room in my Apple Store was gutsy.

That was both the best and worst day to be an ICS.

You had a remote stock room?! We had one at one of my stores, but only back when there were tax free weeks.

Incredibly stupid. They got absolutely nothing. Apple can just flip a switch and all of those phones are disabled and worthless.

You are not thinking like a thief. Sell them online as “unopened” or export them to another country to sell cheap. They are not going to try to keep them or use them themselves.
What will be great is if their phones connected to the store’s wifi and gave over their MAC addresses and whatever else they harvest in data.

If the hole leads directly into the Apple store's storage room as the summary suggests:

- 2 thieves go into storage room
- thief #1 tosses iPhones to thief #2 standing next to hole who tosses iPhones to thief #3 on the other side of the wall and puts them into a large trash bag
- thief #4 takes each filled trash bag out to the getaway vehicle, or they can wait until all trash bags are full then each person carries 2 trash bags out.

This would be a 3-4 person job for things to go smoothly.

I'd imagine a large 65 gallon trash bag can hold somewhere around 70-80 iPhones, if not more. At 70-80 iPhones per bag, that's 7-8 filled trash bags.

If they had cut a larger hole then they could have fill the bags while inside the Apple store's storage room then passed the bags through the hole.


This would have to be an inside job (current or former Apple store employee) as they'd need to know where the storage room was and that it can be accessed through the Seattle Coffee Gear's bathroom.

Eh, if you used a certain mall entrance at at least once mall store I was at, and happened to do so when the daily delivery was made, you would easily know where the storage room was located without any insider info.

Definitely an inside job and no they won’t be sold on eBay, Craigslist, etc. as that’s an easy way to be caught. Whoever stole this many phones likely already has a connection to offload them to in one transaction who will then ship them overseas (likely to China).

One local store, notorious for being the source of various forms of internal theft (eg, 922 parts, etc) had the ICSes no receipt returning scrap items to store gift cards for themselves. Whether or not their title was ever “Genius”, geniuses they are not.

Yeah. Not quite. Theft of this magnitude must be investigated by law enforcement and Apple can’t instruct them to just back off their investigation because the phones were sold to someone else. They would keep them active and then likely share limited tracking data with law enforcement on their use / location to assist with the investigation.

Disabling would be a last resort as recovery of the devices and/or at minimum tracing the sale back to the thieves would be in the interest of law enforcement, and the insurers who must foot the bill for the loss to Apple.

Not to mention the damage to both physical stores.

You are conflating activation locking them with full on disabling them.

As a guy who sometimes has to sit down on a public restroom, I fully agree with you.

And as a guy who quite often pees being sat down in my own home, I don’t see the inconvenience in lowering the toilet seat.

Also, an extra tip: if you are careful with the hygiene, I recommend closing the lid of the toilet (the lid that closes everything) before flushing. Many public toilets flush with high pressure and quite often they spray almost invisible micro-droplets that can contain microbes, and you can breathe them or they can spread across the whole WC, your clothes, and your personal items.

Whether you do or you don’t, most people don’t and you are getting those aerosols either way.

Yea I doubt they’re usable at all. Only option for them would be to sell them super cheapZ doesn’t seem well thought out

Define “super cheap” relative to full cost. There are people still asking over $500 for used iPhone X models.

I don't see how people can make any money off of stealing something that can be notified unless they are using them for parts.

You don’t see how people can make money off of stealing sealed products people will foolishly by without investigating?

Meh. Apple Store backrooms will replace all the drywall with 1/2 metal plates and the 2x4 studs with I-beams.😁 Thieves are gonna need a plasma cutter to gain access to the iPhone.😏 Passive security has fewer weakness than active security. Motion sensor are useless once the knock out the power.

Yep, and cut the phone lines. One day they’ll invent batteries and cell phones…

 

[usagora]

I'm pretty sure these iPhones are traceable and they do become useless once stolen (Serial #, IMEI #, etc). But how can someone carry almost 500 iPhones? That's the main question!

So, what would be the motive if the phones are useless?

 

[NY Guitarist]

Motion sensor are useless once the knock out the power.

My understanding is that an alarm is triggered automatically at the security company when connection with the client is lost.

 

[tryonk]

Can Apple just lock these phones so they can't be used?

I support Apple mobile devices in an academic medical center, and yeah, we can essentially brick them remotely. Apple must track the serial numbers on these, and they can make them useless. That would prevent the thieves from using the phone and probably tick off their customers, but it would do very little to catch the thieves or recover the phones. They'd have to allow the phones to be activated, then track them to see if they could figure out a pattern of where they appeared. The thieves would likely be smart enough to disperse them over a wide area. Likely. A lot of thieves are stupid.

 

[lfaa]

A chance thieves didn't end in a grocery store where they would have stolen Carambars and Cookies and got stomach cramps for at least 3 weeks [sorry guys, all MR readers may not know the song I'm referencing to in this comment] Have a great Easter week-end

 

[sir1963nz]

You don’t realize that stolen phones aren’t really being sold in the USA, but overseas blacklist don’t matter.

They are STILL DOA overseas.

 

[NEPOBABY]

I support Apple mobile devices in an academic medical center, and yeah, we can essentially brick them remotely. Apple must track the serial numbers on these, and they can make them useless. That would prevent the thieves from using the phone and probably tick off their customers, but it would do very little to catch the thieves or recover the phones. They'd have to allow the phones to be activated, then track them to see if they could figure out a pattern of where they appeared. The thieves would likely be smart enough to disperse them over a wide area. Likely. A lot of thieves are stupid.

Definitely. They don't understand phone activation in 2023. Or 2013.

 

[Fred Zed]

I'm pretty sure these iPhones are traceable and they do become useless once stolen (Serial #, IMEI #, etc). But how can someone carry almost 500 iPhones? That's the main question!

Easy. Especially when there’s no chargers included in the boxes these days 🤣

 

[corinthos]

Tim Cook is pissed! He was spotted pushing up his glasses extra hard at a meeting on the incident.

 

[LeeW]

Criminals can't innovate anymore, my ass!