PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — It seems phones are increasingly being stolen. Many victims have tracked the stolen loot overseas, nearly 7000 miles away to Shenzhen, China, known as Asia’s Silicon Valley.
Bailey and Justin contacted the Action News Investigative Team after their phones were swiped at two different Center City Philadelphia bars in a matter of weeks.
“I was just walking around having some drinks, and next thing I know it was out of pocket,” said Bailey.
“I put it on the bar because I use Apple Pay to pay for things,” said Justin. “So as I put it down, I turned around and talked to my friend for a couple minutes. I turned back around and just wasn’t there.”
Bailey said he couldn’t track his phone because he forgot his Apple ID.
But Justin said, like a few other friends who had their devices stolen, his Find My app revealed it was on the move across the world.
“Next day, I tracked it. It was in Staten Island, and then two days later it was in some place in China,” he said.
That place is Shenzhen, which has become a booming electronics market.
American researcher and hacker Andrew Haung said think of this city as a farmers market but for electronics.
Haung, who goes by “Bunny” has a PhD from MIT and became internationally known after he hacked the Xbox gaming console. He also wrote a book about reverse engineering and the need to identify security weaknesses in hardware and software systems.
He’s worked off and on in Shenzhen for years.
“It ends up being a magnet for both legitimate and less legitimate trade,” he said.
He said stolen iPhones are being shipped in bulk to Shenzhen, broken down into parts, and then sold at markets where consumers can get damaged phones fixed. Cameras, screens, cases, batteries, and other parts are sold for profit.
Criminal gangs are targeting events like festivals and bars, stealing phones in bulk and shipping to Shenzhen, where there’s a lax approach to enforcing laws around stolen goods.
Sometimes, phones are unlocked and reset to factory settings to be sold, or entire new handsets are built with the parts, but Haung said that can be difficult.
“Apple made it really inconvenient to sell a stolen iPhone,” he said. “It’s like you can really only sell for scrap parts these days.”
Justin and Bailey both had to buy new iPhones. They both said they’d be more aware of protecting them going forward.
“Don’t keep your phone in your back pocket,” said Bailey.
“Is that how they snagged it?” asked Action News investigator Chad Pradelli.
“Yeah, that’s how they got mine at least,” said Bailey.
Apple is now also taking steps to deter criminal enterprises from selling the phones on the black market. It recently created an activation lock feature that links the phone parts to the owner’s Apple ID. It works when the Find My App is turned on by restricting the calibration of that part and alerts buyers that the parts are stolen.
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