iPhone taken in ‘crime spree’ and more Capitol rioters arrested in the Apple Crime Blotter

The latest in an occasional AppleInsider series, looking at the world of Apple-related crime.

Two Massachusetts men who were arrested in December for an alleged fraud scheme involving fraudulent SBA disaster loans being used to buy iPhones have now been indicted on federal charges.

According to the Department of Justice release, the two 24-year-old men were each indicted on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, four counts of wire fraud and aiding and abetting, and one count of aggravated identity theft. The two are accused of stealing people’s identities, opening fraudulent bank accounts, and using those accounts to “purchase large numbers of iPhones for resale.”

A woman was arrested by the Halton Regional Police Service in Oakville, Ontario, for what they described as a “crime spree,” consisting of 18 counts of nine different crimes committed between Christmas Eve and January 23.

The Oakville News reports the alleged crimes included the theft of an iPhone and the fraudulent use of its Apple Pay function. But the 30-year-old woman is accused of much more, including the theft of $66,000 worth of equipment from the Canadian offices of Rockstar Games, which are based in Oakville. The woman is also accused of stealing mail and a pair of jackets, one of which held car keys, which the woman allegedly used to steal a car.

In addition to numerous theft counts, which include theft of a motor vehicle and two counts of fraudulent use of a credit card — presumably because of the Apple Pay charges — the woman faces six counts of failing to comply with probation.

A 40-year-old woman who worked as the logistics manager for a phone repair company in Singapore has been arrested on charges that she “misappropriated” more than 25,000 defective iPhones and conspired with a man in Malaysia to sell them overseas. The woman worked for Pegatron.

According to Channel News Asia, she was jailed for nine years, after pleading guilty to “conspiring to commit criminal breach of trust as a servant and using part of the criminal proceeds to buy a condominium apartment.”

We told you last time about several individuals who are facing charges in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Several of those people were either filmed by other users’ iPhones or were caught by location data or their own social media posts, often from iPhones.

In the second half of January, several other people were arrested and charged, also because their iPhones gave them away. One man was arrested after posting a screenshot to Facebook of his iPhone showing the U.S. Senate’s WiFi network.

One woman was arrested after she was filmed using a pink iPhone while in the Capitol.

The Capitol riot participant known as “Zip Tie Guy,” according to the criminal complaint filed against him, had shot incriminating video throughout the day with an iPhone mounted to his chest. It captured such potentially illegal actions as “stashing weapons prior to entering Capitol and how he came across flex cuffs.”

In the story of someone at the Capitol not potentially going to jail after all, the Justice Department announced on January 29 it had closed the investigation into suspicious stock trades by Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, which took place following a briefing last February about the approaching coronavirus. The New York Times reports Burr will not face charges.

In May of 2020, a warrant was served to Apple, to obtain Sen. Burr’s iCloud data as part of an investigation into Burr’s stock trades and the possibility of insider trading. The Republican senator, who also surrendered his iPhone to authorities, had made more than 30 stock sales in mid-February, the day after a briefing he received in his capacity as a senator.

Burr, four years before the iCloud warrant, had co-sponsored a bill that would have forced companies like Apple to provide confidential data about customers under investigation. The senator, who stepped down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee after the investigation was announced, is set to retire from the Senate in two years.

A criminal gang in Hong Kong recently pulled off a robbery in which they lured a female cryptocurrency trader to an office and stole the equivalent of $448,700 in cryptocurrency at knifepoint, via her iPhone. The South China Morning Post writes this is the second such recent theft of its kind in that city.

“Soon after she was handed the money, three men carrying either a knife or a rod rushed out from a room and snatched the money and the iPhone from her at knifepoint,” police told the newspaper.

A man entered a Cricket Wireless store in South Carolina in mid-January and asked for an iPhone charger. Then, the man pulled a gun and asked for iPhones, getting away with three iPhone 11s, four iPhone SEs, five iPhone 12s, and six iPhone XRs, The Times and Democrat reported. A similar robbery took place the same day at a nearby Boost Mobile.

An Illinois woman told Chicago’s CBS affiliate that the Chicago Police Department raided her home in 2019, causing thousands of dollars in damage to a television, a mattress, a mirror, and her daughter’s iPad. But, the woman says the police had the wrong house.

The raid, which was attributed to a “bad tip” from an informant, has not resulted in any financial compensation for the woman, who lives in Calumet City outside of the city of Chicago. An insurance claim, she said, was denied because the damage was from a police raid.

A woman in Perth, Australia, had her iPhone stolen along with her bag, and after police refused to investigate, she used Find My iPhone to track down the thieves, who turned out to be 10- and 12-year-old girls. According to 6PR, the two children “admitted to the theft in front of their mum and they showed me where my phone was in the drain completely smashed.”

A pair of juveniles were apprehended near a T-Mobile Store in suburban Philadelphia in mid-January after they were spotted by a store employee attempting to steal iPhones from the display. After the suspects implied that they had guns, the store manager notified the local police, who apprehended the two suspects as well as a 17-year-old female acting as a getaway driver.

Crimewatch PA reports the group had traveled from Baltimore.