I told you that New York is one of the cities where extremely many iDevices are stolen every year and the problem is so big, yet the NYPD, New York Police Department, decided to organize a special team of detectives that locates these iDevices with the help of Apple. The detectives use the IMEIs of the terminals to help Apple locate them and the interesting part is that Apple can discover them no matter in which country on the globe they are. If a person reported that his iDevice was stolen, he reports the theft to the police, the police find the IMEI of the terminal and locate it with the help of Apple.
Every time an Apple device is stolen, detectives attempt to get tracking numbers from the victim or online records... That number, known as the International Mobile Station Equipment Identity, is then shared with the officers in Police Headquarters who pass it on to Apple... The The California-based company then informs the NYPD of the device's current location — and it can track it even if it was reregistered with a different wireless provider. We're looking for ways to find individuals who have stolen Apple products and return the products to their original owners," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. "It is being done to learn the pattern who is stealing.
Until now, the police seem to have been successful in recovering iDevices, 74% of them remaining in New York after the theft. Among the most interesting cases is that of an iPad tablet located in the Dominican Republic and recovered by an NYPD policeman, but also that of an iPad tablet thief who was arrested in a bus station. As usual, stolen terminals are bought by people in good faith, who generally had no idea that those products were stolen, and the bad part is that sometimes the devices are confiscated and returned to their rightful owners.
One stolen iPad was tracked to the Dominican Republic and recovered with the help of an NYPD intelligence cop assigned to Santo Domingo. In another case, it busted a man suspected of selling stolen iPads at a city bus stop by tracking them with Apple's help. "We staked out the bus stop, ID'd the suspect and arrested him. We recovered the iPad," said Browne, who noted 74 percent of all stolen Apple devices resurface within the five boroughs.
To be honest, it is gratifying to see that in the USA there are cities where the police take this kind of theft seriously, something that cannot be said about our country.
