Tracking Down a Cell Phone Thief

Zone-MR writes "Last Saturday, MoDaCo (the world's largest smartphone community) held a get-together for their forum members. Unfortunately the positive community spirit was soured by an individual who decided to steal one of the charity raffle prizes - a C550 mobile phone. Check out the story of how we tracked the thief down, got the phone back, and secured the thief's place in the interweb's hall-of-shame."

Interweb?

[MrYotsuya]

Who the hell says interweb?

Re:Interweb?

[Phosphor3k]

Yeah seriously. Everyone knows it's 'intarweb'.

But... never steal a camera phone

[XplosiveX]

oh the reasons you couldn't steal.. It is worth a laugh.

http://www.longislandpress.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p= 2037& [longislandpress.com]

And I would have gotten away with it

[Anonymous Coward]

...if it weren't for those lousy kids.

Bill Engvall would be proud

[ff1324]

"...don't be fucktarded enough to steal a phone from a community of phone experts..."

HERE'S YOUR SIGN

Re:Interweb?

[TummyX]

Nope. Wikipedia disagrees. But mentions Intarweb as an alternate spelling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interweb [wikipedia.org]


You must be fun at parties.

Innerwha?

[lullabud]

Ya'll, ah ain't nevah hurdah no such thang as tha'ch'all talkin' bout... thet thar internet.

Re:And I would have gotten away with it

[Anonymous Coward]

...if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Re:some good detective work...

[rzebram]

You mean to tell me that real police officers can't zoom in on footage taken from a $5 security camera and enhance it enough to read the room number off the keycard in someones hand? Or that they can't pull up a guy's life story and his current location based on a fingerprint left on a furnace in Bangladesh?Blasphemy!

Department of Homeland Security Response

[f4phaedrus]

If this had happened at the US Department of Homeland Security, they would have raised the alert level to Orange and we would be told to be on the lookout for slightly overweight middle-aged men with glasses, wearing dockers, using a cellphone.
Anyone seen using a cellphone in a dark corner or putting a cellphone in an inside pocket (trying to conceal it!) will be immediately taken in for questioning.

Henceforth, all cellphone usage will require a licence at the county courthouse, and people must submit valid reasons for having one, and give their fingerprints and DNA for registration.

Who says Interweb?

[mek2600]

Really, really, really cool people.

Re:Happened to me

[ImaLamer]

Someone stole my sisters phone in high school (just about a year and a half ago). I just kept sending the phone text messages like:

"This is the Cincinnati Police. This is a stolen phone."

"Cincinnati Bell Telephone Theft Tracking Services - LAST CELL TOWER CONTACTED: #28302"

"THEFT NOTICE: ALL CALLS ARE MONITORED AND RECORDED"

And so forth... The next day she got it back before her first class started. It passed through six hands all with the note: "Return this to Sadie XXXXXXX"

Re:some good detective work...

[noidentity]

"You mean to tell me that real police officers can't zoom in on footage taken from a $5 security camera and enhance it enough to read the room number off the keycard in someones hand?"

...including looking around the back if the card is flipped over.

Re:Interweb?

[91degrees]

My gran calls it the "Double-u Double-u Double-u dot".