Five thieves thought to be in their late teens and early twenties stole $24,000 worth of products from the Apple store in Corte Madera, California, in a brazen attack Monday night.
The gang entered the store shortly after 8 p.m., then grabbed 17 iPhones, three iPads and two Macs in front of a small group of customers. The culprits fled, and police are still searching for them.
The thieves were almost apprehended by officers, but managed to escape. They were last spotted by a security officer who saw them running toward the back of a Macy’s store, but was unable to tell what happened next.
This is the second time this Marin County store has been robbed in recent months. It was previously burgled on November 25, when thieves swiped between $35,000 and $40,000 of merchandise.
Local authorities are asking for anyone with information on the robbery to contact the Central Marin Police Authority on (415) 927-5150.
A target for thieves
Apple stores and products have unfortunately long been a target of thieves. Although features like Find My iPhone and Activation Lock have helped reduce crime, the resale value of Apple devices means they’re in as high demand in the criminal world as they are in the legit one.
Apple recently made its demo devices even easier to steal, by removing the security cables that tethered products to display tables. The idea is to give customers more freedom to test the devices.
Source: ABC News
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
5 responses to “Thieves steal $24,000 of devices from Corte Madera Apple store”
idiots they all be traceable very easily
….And also they will be useless; all IMEI-numbers blocked, all serial numbers in the police registers… all “tracers” ON on every device….
So stupid…
But they might not actually be selling them on the black market as full units. There is the black market for spare parts, so it’s very possible that they simply disassemble them and sell the parts like motherboard, as a spare part. the MB can fetch a few hundred for just an iPhone. If they got laptops, they can make a decent amount for the guts too.
Remember, these people aren’t thinking with a full deck to begin with, but they don’t look at how much they can get compared to MSRP. They just look at how much they can get. These people will steal even if the reward is only $20.
What would happen if you already had a working SIM, can’t you just put it in another device and it works? What happens if you put a working SIM into a stolen phone? Does it still work? If so, then they might be selling the used phones to someone that has a working SIM from another phone.
You could put the working sim in another phone, but Apple will remotely disable it. As soon as it goes online, its toast.
The IMEI is coded to the motherboard, so that component would be useless. So then the Touch ID chip would be useless as well.