The Oakland police have just arrested the suspect on the crazy viral “This Guy Has My MacBook” Tumblr blog.
Joshua Kaufman just Tweeted:
ARRESTED! An Oakland police officer just called me to let me know that they arrested the guy in my photos! BOOYA!
Guess how the police got him?
Using Hidden, a Mac security app that can secretly snap photos and screenshots, Kaufman figured out the suspect was a cab driver. The cops called the cab service and arrested the perp when he pulled up, according to a Tweet Kaufman just posted:
The police used my evidence (email which pointed to a cab service) that he was a driver and tricked him into picking them up. Nice work OPD!
As we previously reported, Kaufman took matters into his own hands when Oakland police said they didn’t have the resources to arrest the crook. Kaufman set up the “This Guy Has My MacBook” Tumblr blog to post photos taken by his stolen machine.
The blog went massively viral today, prompting Oakland police to take action. Notably, Kaufman’s first contact tonight with OPD was a call from the Department’s PR officer.
“Just spoke to Officer Holly Joshi, Media/PR Officer for the Oakland Police Department, who will now be following up on my case!” he tweeted at just before 6PM.
Two hours later, the perp was arrested.
Here’s the whole story via Storify:
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
19 responses to “Police Have Just Arrested MacBook Crook!”
HAHAHA.. I wanted to say he is probably a cab driver but I didn’t want to appear to be a bigot. This is awesome.. HAHAHAHAHA
Apple rocks!
Hidden is not from Apple, just saying. Apple rocks too, regardless.
whats the program he uses i want to get that
Hahahahahahahha! he appears to be looking directly at the macbook camera LOL :D
Looking at that dude made me ill. So many thieves go after Macs it’s messed up. Thats why it’s absolutely necessary to have software like this. This guy planned ahead and thats why he was rewarded with his baby back, and that Dbag in jail.
Excellent posting.
Another excellent Macintosh Story!
how did you figure out he was a cab driver from a few pics?and also at what cab service he worked at?
just read through the whole twitter post, still seems fishy to me