Police arrested an alleged iPhone thief after the device’s rightful owner used the Find My app to track down the missing handset.
A 21-year-old Madison, Wisconsin, resident left a bar on Sunday, only to notice that her debit card, driver’s license and iPhone X were missing, according to WKOW. When her card was used later, she visited the location of the purchase — and managed to get surveillance footage of the suspected thief.
However, it wasn’t until the Find My app began to ping that she was able to get her iPhone back.
WKOW’s report notes that the victim’s mom recognized the location of the device as being close to a store that bought secondhand phones. The victim and her mom shared their information with a store employee named Chantal Schroeder. A few hours later, Schroeder said, “a guy walked in with a white iPhone X” matching the description of the victim’s device. That man was 51-year-old Eric Eisenhauer.
WKOW‘s report notes that:
“Schroeder turned on the phone for the would-be seller and saw an alert on its status, texted the victim, and stalled Eisenhauser to give the victim time to arrive.”
The victim and her mom arrived at the store and, with the help of bystanders, kept Eisenhauser there by barricading the store doors. Police arrested Eisenhauer, who has been charged with felony ID theft among other crimes.
Find my iPhone: Helping customers since 2010
It’s great to hear that this story apparently has a happy ending. However, people should be incredibly cautious about using the Find My app to track down criminals. As useful a tool as Find My is, this incident could easily have turned out very differently. As it was, Eisenhauer allegedly knocked the victim’s mother down during the confrontation.
Apple introduced its location-tracking app for finding lost devices in June 2010. The app was initially called Find My iPhone, before being renamed the Find My app in iOS 13. Now you can use the Find My app to track the location of devices including iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches and AirPods.
