iPhone Stolen and Retrieved
While in New Orleans visiting family, we decided to take a walk along the levee in Lake Front.
When we got back home, my wife realizes that she was missing her iPhone 4S. She knew she had taken it with her because she took a video of our three year old daughter along the way.
We called the phone and it rang and then went to voicemail. We called again about 2 minutes later and it was going straight to voicemail.
I then opened up the Find My Phone app on my iPhone and tried to track it, however it was showing offline, which was very odd to us since the phone was fully charged before leaving.
We then started hunting for it along the path we had walked for about 45 mins, but didn’t have any luck finding it. Then I put the phone in lost mode and locked it remotely. After about 10 mins, I got an email saying my phone had been found, which means it had turned back on somehow.
When I tracked it, the phone was located a few houses down from where we live. We went to the house and rang the bell, but no one answered. We then saw a car in the back of the house that was on and someone sitting in it talking on a phone.
I told my wife it looked odd and we should ask the person if they know anything since it was showing in front of their house. The man opened his window and seemed very surprised to see us. He was an older man and was talking on a flip phone. I told him we our iPhone and it was showing in front of his house.
Then something funny happened. Firstly, his hand started shaking like when you get really nervous or think you are about to get caught. Secondly, when I mentioned tracking, he looked surprised and said “oh, you can track it?”. This was a total giveaway to me that he had taken it and didn’t realize we could track it.
At this point, I didn't want to confront the man, as he would have definitely denied it and if I happened to be wrong, could have gotten really mad or angry. So instead, I just that we will keep searching, but if he happens to find it in the grass near his home to please return it. Then we left.
After this, we saw the man drive off and I had the app open to track the phone. We saw it move about two blocks and then suddenly it disappeared. This confirmed that he had the phone with him and then turned it off as fast as he could.
Since he was pretty nervous, I told my wife he would probably come a few hours later and say that he "found" it and give it back, but if not, we could file an official police complain.
Luckily, we didn't have too. Instead, the phone suddenly turned back on about 20 minutes later and it was showing up again around his house, but this time it was further towards the levee in the grass area. We searched and found it lying there in about 5 minutes.
Even though I can't be certain, I'm pretty sure it was not just sitting in the grass because the phone turned on and off several times, it moved on the map, the guy was really nervous and we searched that area several times with several people and no one saw the phone.
I was just shocked that a well to-do old white man would try to steal my iPhone. Luckily, his lack of knowledge of smartphones helped us because he had no clue about tracking since he was still using an old flip phone.
Anyway, glad we got the phone back and happy with our investigative skills! Thanks Apple for building some good software.
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