I wonder if Apple would go after the coffee store in a lawsuit for lax security.
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Thieves Tunnel Through Coffee Shop Wall to Steal $500,000 in iPhones From Washington Apple Store
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Seems unlikely and would flop in court anyway. Not to mention it would be terrible press for the most valuable company in the world to go after a mom and pop coffee store over this. If anything it should be the developer that owns the mall that they go after. Or, Apple could just build their stores to ICD 705 level and then they wouldn't have to worry about folks coming in through the walls, or ceilings, or front door...stores wouldn't look as pretty though 😆
And all these devices will be useless as Apple disables activation on them from inventory. LOL
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.
Will be even more dumb if they only stole non pro models, even Apple have trouble shifting them 
$500,000 in iPhones. So…what? That’s like…100 phones nowadays?
Why go to all that bother? It's modern day USA. Just walk into the shop while it is open and take what you want!
Of course! It was the minimum wage student baristas! #columbo
This is the man who you are looking for!!"I would have never suspected we were adjacent to the Apple Store, how it wraps around I mean”
Never?
“So, someone really had to think it out and have access to the mall layout."
I have access to the mall layout.
This is really bad
I my country you would need to have a (thin) steel sheet in those walls to even be able to get insurance for those places.Does not matter to the thieves. They gonna be able to flip the sealed phones anyway, as it's not like that they gonna need to demo those phones, when still in packaging. They don't care if their buyers bought essentially a brick.
When I go visit Verizon’s store for a phone or an Apple watch or an iPad, they have these timed safe, that don’t always allow the products to be taken (even by employees).
An Apple Store at the Alderwood Mall was robbed last weekend, with thieves infiltrating the location through a nearby coffee shop. According to Seattle's King 5 News, thieves broke into Seattle Coffee Gear, went into the bathroom, and cut a hole in the wall to get to the Apple Store backroom.
The burglars were able to bypass the Apple Store's security system by using the adjacent coffee shop, stealing a total of 436 iPhones that were worth around $500,000.
According to Seattle Coffee Gear manager Eric Marks, the coffee shop is not noticeably adjacent to the Apple Store because of the way that the store is laid out. "I would have never suspected we were adjacent to the Apple Store, how it wraps around I mean," Marks told King 5 News. "So, someone really had to think it out and have access to the mall layout."
Police were able to obtain surveillance footage of the theft, but as it is part of an active investigation, it has not yet been released. Nothing was stolen from the coffee shop, but it will cost $1,500 to replace locks and repair the bathroom wall.
No employees were at the Apple Store when the theft happened as the Alderwood Mall had closed for the night. An Alderwood spokesperson said they were working with the police to solve the incident, but Apple has not yet commented.
Article Link: Washington Apple Store Robbed of $500,000 in iPhones After Thieves Tunnel Through Coffee Shop Wall
Smells like an inside job. You had to either study the layout of the coffee shop or have access to the building floor plans to figure this out. Most likely someone who works for the mall management company or security
In context of this forum this reads way too much “Small Tim Cook’s”This sounds like a boring but successful sequel to
Not sure if that is in the US, but in many countries the building layout of public buildings like malls is openly displayed, so that people can see were the emergency exists are. It also helps firefighters. Unless it is some secretive building, the layout is no secret.
I see what you did there LMAO “Inside Job” like that movieTo me, it most definately seems like it's an inside job. Everything is pretty much caught on the surveillance video.
Even if these weren't public it wouldn't take much to figure it out just walking around in that mall. Kinda like the guys that an secret apartment (for years) in a "dead space" in another mall.
As to security measure, the Apple store should have had some in the backroom. Movement sensors and the phones looked into cabinets that take a few minutes to break into would have been enough to make this a failure.
So if it was an inside job it wasn't about the layout it was about knowing that the phones would be in an unprotected backroom ready for the tacking.
Yeahs seems that people are missing this.
The moment someone starts the phone and it "phones home", it will be marked as stolen and be bricked. Apple did that in the past and will do this here again.
I'm sure they will try to bulk sell it somewhere. Either online or in other countries. But it won't be good anywhere. Unless someone is going to use it completely offline (impossible really), they won't be able to bypass the brick.
I expect the apple store has insurance. And maybe the insurance will go after the mall for the easy to pass walls.
Apple will most likely write the difference as a loss after they brick all the phones.
I do expect in a few months some small echos of "I bought this new iphone but it won't work!?".