Thieves steal $300,000 worth of iPhones and devices - Perth

The Apple store in Booragoon (Perth WA) was broken into Tuesday night, after the thieves failed attempt to burgle the Perth City store.

They made off with over $300,000 worth of mostly iPhones, and other devices.

One would imagine that Apple can now block the stolen device serials in their activation system, essentially bricking them, making them useless and basically worthless, so what's the point?

https://www.watoday.com.au/national...eft-rampage-across-perth-20190903-p52nlx.html

 

So about 5k in actual parts then ?

 

Or maybe they took 300 monitor stands.

 

Would have to be.....they would be bricked straight away.

 

Why on earth would you break into an Apple shop at all?

 

People that do this kind of shit are rarely intelligent crims...


JSmith

 

They're called "politicians".

 

I dont know about iCloud but the nand chip holding the serial and IMEI can be de soldered and swapped with a broken phone or reprogrammed
The device can also be used in a country that dosnt participate with the global IMEI network lock thingie but again iCloud may still be a problem if they havnt found a way
Or load Android on it and sell it for a discount in Africa or China
Or most likely, just sell/send them to the phone chop shop

 

Why not? If it's not tied down (or even tied down!) someone will steal it, no matter what it is.

 

They will likely sell them to unsuspecting people on ebay/gummy/FB. I'll bet they won't give refunds if the imei's are blocked somehow. This is the risk of buying a brand new iphone or whatever. The people selling them have usually either stolen them, or committed telco fraud to obtain them. There was a dodgey store on the GC selling Samsung phones that were telstra branded.... wonder how they got them at a low enough price to sell for 60% of retail.

 

theres a few facebook marketplace people selling iphone X/XS brand new unopened for cheaper than second hand but wont accept paypal/credit card so watch out

 

interesting demographics there in the ranks..

 

https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/report-a-scam


JSmith

 

How do you commit telco fraud to get one? You mean using a stolen credit card?

 

stolen credit card/fake ID/stolen identity. Its a massive , sauce : work for a telco.

EDIT I should elaborate.... perp enters "hello, I work for xxx company, and we need 14 new iphones" . They bank on the salesman being an idiot, and most are unfortunately, they are under such pressure to make the quota for contracts they jump at it. I've seen them get patted on the back for their efforts!!

perp then goes to the next telco and does the same.

 

was at Chadstone last night and a couple of young kids (look maybe 12-13) tried to steal one of the Sphero's that they had on display but one of the workers spotted him putting it in his pocket

 

Don't they have them tethered to the desk, with an alarm or something? At the optus shop, their phones are all tied up somehow.

 

not the Sphero's.. they have them on the side of the store with a ramp thing they can play on

I was waiting for the Apple Genius to get to me, and the 2 kids looked super sus

 

"woo cheap iphone" said their target demographic.

 

IMEI locked and worthless fancy looking ipod touches

I suppose apples activation system would also have these nuked already