New York Thieves Wearing Apple Store T-Shirts Steal $16,000 In iPhones (pix11.com) 120
An anonymous reader quotes this article from a TV station in New York about a "brazen daylight heist" made possible by wearing the right t-shirt:
Two thieves put on Apple store employee T-shirts and headed past the Genius Bar to the repair room, grabbed what they could and walked out with more than $16,000 worth of stolen iPhones... Police said just one hour before, the same thieves may have stolen three iPhones 6's worth $1,900 from the Apple Store on 14th Street and Ninth Avenue in the West Village... Earlier this year, three thieves pulled off two similar, but much more lucrative heists, at the Upper West Side Apple Store at Broadway and 67th Street, a training center for Apple employees. Once again, they dressed as Apple employees and stole a total of $49,000 worth of iPhones.
$16,000? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:$16,000? (Score:5, Funny)
Two thieves put on Apple store employee T-shirts and headed past the Genius Bar to the repair room, grabbed what they could and walked out with more than $16,000 worth of stolen iPhones
The good news is that only 10 phones were stolen.
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OK, so I was joking with my earlier comment about only 10 phones being stolen, but I started thinking about it (having purchased an iPhone 6 Plus for my mom on her birthday) and spec'ed out a new top-of-the-line iPhone 6 Plus at Apple.com [imgur.com].
It would only take 17 of these to break 16K. 16K is not an insignificant amount of money (to me, anyway), but 17 phones isn't really a whole lot of equipment.
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headed past the Genius Bar
Which should indicate what kind of Genius staffs the store. Or do they have such high turnover that people don't recognize who is a co-worker and who isn't?
Re:Yes $16000 (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but until you sell something, your loss is just what you invested. Else I claim that the hardware I slapped together costs 10 grand (despite costing 5 bucks to make) and my insurance claim is for 10 grand.
The nuanced answer (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but until you sell something, your loss is just what you invested.
Speaking as a certified accountant, I can tell you that that isn't true at all. It might be what you get reimbursed for by an insurance company but it isn't the full value of the loss incurred. Apple is self insured so they won't get reimbursed by anyone. Until the device can be replaced and sold, the value of the loss is the cost of the device, the cost to replace the device, the cost to transport and sell the device, the cost of investigating and dealing with the loss, the cost of the lost revenue for whatever period the device was unavailable to be sold, and I can keep going. Basically you have the cost of the device plus the opportunity cost of the lost revenue for whatever time the revenue is lost. If a sale is lost permanently (customer comes in to buy iPhone, can't get one and buys Android instead) then the lost value of the iPhone is the full retail value. If they can replace the phone the value is the cost of the device plus the opportunity costs involved.
Else I claim that the hardware I slapped together costs 10 grand (despite costing 5 bucks to make) and my insurance claim is for 10 grand.
The selling price of the iPhones is well known and the cost to build them is easy to prove. A company the size of Apple is self insured so there is no insurance claim to be made. The value of the phones at minimum is higher than their cost to make and could in principle be the full retail value of them if certain factors prove true. The real value of the loss is somewhere in between in the long run most likely but it definitely is more than just the cost to make it.
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That much is true, but I dare say that not a single sale of an iPhone will be lost due to this. What do you think the average Apple devotee will do, buy the Samsung iPhone instead?
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That much is true, but I dare say that not a single sale of an iPhone will be lost due to this.
Assuming they sell the iPhones, rather than parting them out, there's now ~17 iPhones Apple will not be able to sell because the people who would have purchased them purchased the stolen phones instead.
This is basic pizza-nomics: someone steals a pizza, you buy it at a discount and eat it; now you are full, and therefore you do not buy a pizza.
They are out the lost sales as well.
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Do they not have serial / IMEI numbers and can block the phones? This would eliminate a fair proportion of lost sales.
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Do they not have serial / IMEI numbers and can block the phones? This would eliminate a fair proportion of lost sales.
No, all the thieves have to do is swap them out with another set of boxes some place out. But the IMEI's are not necessarily statically inventoried, either. Meaning they'd have to do an audit of all iPhones sold or in stock in a given area, and it's hard to do that in real time.
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But the IMEI's are not necessarily statically inventoried, either.
Apple probably knows precisely which IMEIs were sent to which stores.
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But the IMEI's are not necessarily statically inventoried, either.
Apple probably knows precisely which IMEIs were sent to which stores.
Apple knows when a pallet is sent to a regional distribution warehouse in a region. The pallet is then broken up and sent to the stores. Which set goes to which store is usually unknown, but discoverable by range; assuming the boxes from the broken down pallet were stacked out sequentially. Which they usually would likely not be.
You seem to think they have more electronic automation than they actually have. They didn't even have badge based access to their stockroom, in this case.
Even so, assuming it we
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But the IMEI's are not necessarily statically inventoried, either.
Apple probably knows precisely which IMEIs were sent to which stores.
Too much trouble for a mere $20,000 or so. Plus, if they're sold overseas that adds to the complication. In addition, what if someone innocently gets one and doesn't realize it's stolen, either because it's a gift or they paid the going used price for a like new phone; and Apple nukes it and as a result they can't dial 911 and something bad happens. The lawsuit would cost a lot more than the value of the phone. A more likely response is to determine who to better keep people posing as employees out of the s
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I would bet 8 labor hours that there are at least 2 geniuses (and a manager) doing a Secured Inventory Audit to find out exactly which phones are missing.
(and if they can't audit the serials THEY ARE MORONS)
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911 laws
if the transceiver is live the phone can be used to call 911
and why in the Ech Eee Double HockeySticks were the phones not in a "cage"??
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911 laws
if the transceiver is live the phone can be used to call 911
and why in the Ech Eee Double HockeySticks were the phones not in a "cage"??
While I agree on the 911 laws, which is why I found stores sell 911 calling devices silly, but depending on what bricked means it could conceivably not even power up. I agree, though, why aren't they locked up? Maybe a few are left out to allow quick turnaround and the thieves grabbed that?
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then there should have been an employee in Direct Control of the handsets.
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then there should have been an employee in Direct Control of the handsets.
Maybe it's cheaper to lose 20k in phones every now and then than pay an employee at every store? Still it seems silly that they didn't have better security than they apparently had; though I bet if an employee saw someone stealing theft were told corporate policy is to let it go rather than confront the thief and risk escalating the situation.
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They should have had access control on the door, standalone PIN-only locksets are available for $150 and take only a few minutes to install.
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Don't know about Apple, but the Microsoft store scans the IMEI at purchase as part of the transaction. They could tell police in five minutes which ones were not in the store and hadn't been sold.
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So which figure are they going to use on their taxes? Because you know the joe q public taxpayer will be picking up at least a portion of this tab
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Ah don't be concerned about it, Apple isn't much of a fan of paying taxes anyway:
http://www.nytimes.com/interac... [nytimes.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04... [nytimes.com]
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And you are a fan?
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Yes I'm a fan of companies paying their fair share of taxes, whether APPL, GOOG or my little co
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Taxes are what pay for services, so yes, I'm certainly a fan of paying taxes. I like paved roads, safe food, and potable water that comes out of the tap. I don't even complain about paying for schools even though we don't have kids, because I know if kids get educated adequately then my area will be nicer to live in. We pay considerably more in taxes than we need to at our income level, because we don't shelter our income. What I am NOT a fan of are Libertardians who think that all this stuff arrives fo
Cash basis (Score:2)
So which figure are they going to use on their taxes? Because you know the joe q public taxpayer will be picking up at least a portion of this tab
Taxes are done on a cash basis so they'll probably take the material cost of the unit plus whatever expenses they incur in the process of dealing with the theft which might actually add up to more than the retail price of the phones themselves when all is said and done. Dealing with cops, security and paying lawyers is shockingly expensive.
This will not have any meaningful impact on the amount of tax that Apple pays. Yes it will (very) slightly reduce Apple's profits and in theory that would result in low
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Given that the current iPhone has been around for almost a year, stocks are aplenty and those who go to an Apple store to buy an iPhone are more likely to go to another one or come back the next day than to buy an Android phone, I'd be very surprised if this event actually lead to a significant number of irrevocably lost sales, if any.
Also, no accounting for that, but most anything making into the news is in effect advertisement, and even an incredibly tiny additional curiosity etc. on consumers' part compe
Self insurance (Score:2)
Given that the current iPhone has been around for almost a year, stocks are aplenty and those who go to an Apple store to buy an iPhone are more likely to go to another one or come back the next day than to buy an Android phone, I'd be very surprised if this event actually lead to a significant number of irrevocably lost sales, if any
Probably true but one has to account for all the possible outcomes.
Also, I think it's not quite accurate to call apple "self-insured" - sure they may not have contracted with an insurance company for such events (I don't know), and sure they have a lot of cash that insulates them from measurable consequences, but these do not a self-insurance make.
Yes Apple is self insured [wikipedia.org]. It's a common term of art [wikipedia.org] for when company's back benefits and hedge against losses with certain pools of assets rather than by contracting with an insurance company. In the case of Apple it probably costs less for them to simply eat the loss than to pay an insurance company. Insurance is really to transfer risk, typically risks the company can't handle themselves. The loss of a few iPhones is a rounding error
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> Probably true but one has to account for all the possible outcomes.
Sure. On the basis of prior probabilities or actual events (assuming Apple Stores register buying intention that evaporates due to lack of stock at the moment). I.e. we apparently agree that it's not correct to just blindly calculate with the retail value.
> Yes Apple is self insured [wikipedia]
These links do little to further the claim that these represent self-insurance. I thought it's something more specific - as your wikipedia lin
Accounting for shrinkage (no not that kind...) (Score:2)
These links do little to further the claim that these represent self-insurance. I thought it's something more specific - as your wikipedia link seems to suggest too. With your quite broad definition of self-insurance, everyone is self-insuring left and right.
That is actually true. When you decline to buy the extended warranty you are engaging in a small scale version of self insurance. Apple is just able to absorb far larger risks. Don't get too worked up about the the term. I agree that it's a little bit silly but as long as you understand what it represents you'll know what people mean when they say it. There are lots of terms like that in finance and accounting. Often several that mean the same thing (Sales = Revenue = Gross Receipts for example) for n
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> It's annoying to people like me that come from an engineering/physics background where terms tend to be more standardized.
Having done financial risk management etc. with eng and accounting degrees myself, I can see the pompousness and arbitrariness of much terminology in finance, esp. where consumers need to be misled or peacocking status can be gained by throwing around 'financology' terms. I'm with Paul Wilmott on the arrogance aspect. I can also see a lot of normal things in life as complex financia
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Really?
http://smallbusiness.chron.com... [chron.com]
The rule for reporting inventory is that it must be valued at acquisition cost or market value, whichever is the lower amount. In general, inventories should be valued at acquisition costs. [...] Valuing at the price you could sell at retail is not allowed because retail prices are inflated to cover selling costs. Selling costs are not allowed in the market value calculation.
Inventory valuation is just part of the equation (Score:2)
Really?
Yes really.
The rule for reporting inventory is that it must be valued at acquisition cost or market value, whichever is the lower amount. In general, inventories should be valued at acquisition costs. [...] Valuing at the price you could sell at retail is not allowed because retail prices are inflated to cover selling costs. Selling costs are not allowed in the market value calculation.
What you have quoted there is merely a detailing of what can be reported on the inventory account on the balance sheet. Accounting 101 stuff. There's a lot more to it than that. The value of inventory is only a fraction of the costs that would incurred in a theft. When the theft occurs you incur a variety of expenses including legal fees, security expenses, cost of replacing the lost inventory, administrative burden, insurance costs (not applicable here), and a bunch of other stuff you probab
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But seriously, you should brush up on your accounting skills, specifically "inventory."
http://www.accountingtools.com/accounting-inventory-methods
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Unless supplies are tight and loss of sales is irrecuperable, it's the cost rather than lost sales that matter, so with about 65% gross margin, the loss is around 5k value. However:
1. The thiefs may successfully sell their stash. This may lead to some people not buying from a store as they bought it from the fence. This pushes the actual loss a bit higher (but most likely not to full retail).
2. Such a heist is mildly interesting and entertaining, not to mention newsworthy or even 'viral'. A 0.001% increase
Probably Not Thieves (Score:2, Funny)
They were probably undercover FBI agents trying to reduce the availability of iPhones to consumers.
Fun with social engineering (Score:1)
If you walk in like you belong, look like you belong, act like you belong, and have balls of brass, you too can go places and do things you shouldn't.
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If you've got balls of brass, the one thing you can't do is get a full body x-ray scan.
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Ah yes, Valentines day used to be the glorious hacker holiday. The only day a speed delivery uniform and a bunch of flowers opens you every door.
Sadly companies caught on. But it was good times.
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This fails to work if there really are geniuses at the genius bar though.
What do they do with them? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are presumably markets where IMEI blacklists won't cause you any trouble(or you can use the thing as a glorified ipod touch); but Apple presumably has knowledge of serial numbers/device IDs/etc. and there aren't a lot of alternatives for things like iOS updates Indeed, if they felt like it, Apple would be in an excellent position to brick the devices if they ever made the mistake of accepting an update from Apple.
Do they just part them out? Are their actually still jailbreaks and such for the newer models good enough that you can operate one outside of Apple's sight? Do you just resell them to optimistic idiots looking for suspiciously good deals on idevices and make this their problem?
I can see that 'compact, expensive, widely desired' are all good qualities in a theft target; but 'bristling with radios and globally unique IDs burned into the hardware and firmware; and nearly impossible to use without the vendor's continued cooperation' seem like egregiously bad qualities.
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Apple would be in an excellent position to brick the devices if they ever made the mistake of accepting an update from Apple.
Apple can probably just remotely block the ability to activate after a factory reset, and remotely enable their 'Find my iPhone' feature, then permanently lock the devices up.
Re:What do they do with them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Chances are these guys will pawn them or sell them on the street. If they had half a brain they would never use them and once the money has changed hands they don't have to worry about whether they have been blacklisted or not.
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You can sell them to suckers they don't know any better. The thieves profit, the end buyer, who may ultimately not even know they've purchased a stolen iPhone loses.
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What can you actually do with a stolen iphone at this point?
Or you could buy one for cash some place, and then return the stolen one in its place. It's not like Best Buy looks at anything but the SKU.
Or You could just put on Khakis, a blue shirt, and a nametag, and trade out your stone iPhones for Best Buy "clean" ones.
Or if you had a buddy who worked at Best Buy, the buddy could "launder" the iPhones for you.
Lots of possibilities...
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Actually, for cellphones, I believe Best Buy and other retailers track serial numbers - when they get a shipment of new phones, they enter every serial number into their inventory system. If any get stolen, they can look it up in the system and know exactly what serial numbers were stolen.
It also goes that when you buy a cellphone, they scan the serial number as well -
Huh? (Score:1)
"walked out with more than $16,000 worth of stolen iPhones"
So... wait. The thieves stole stolen iphones?
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
No, they walked out with iPhones which they had just stolen. I see your point, but the original statement isn't grammatically incorrect.
14th and 9th isn't the West Village.... (Score:4, Informative)
It's in Chelsea or maybe the Meatpacking District (if you read some of the signs in the area), but it definitely isn't West Village.
Now they need the state again (Score:2, Interesting)
Now they need the state, crying for help because evil nasty criminals stole stuff from them. But when its about paying taxes, or helping the FBI decrypt a shooter's iPhone, they say fuck the state.
I don't have anything against companies building products that can't be decrypted. But this iPhone was a product that *could* be decrypted by apple, but they refused simply to protect their image as manufacturer of phones that can't be decrypted.
The feds should decline investigating until apple pays its fucking ta
Your tiny little brain can't understand this, but: (Score:3)
1. Apple pays all taxes required by law, and they play by the same rules as any other company.
2. Apple didn't break any laws by refusing to crack the encryption on one of their phones, if they had then the FBI would have pursued it rather than giving up--and Apple is innocent until proven guilty.
3. The FBI doesn't have the right to unilaterally refuse to investigate crimes just because they don't like the victim--that would be pretty fucked up.
4. By all accounts this was a local crime and will be investigat
FTFY. (Score:1)
Apple pays all taxes required by law**
** - Exotic accounting excepted.
There's your Barry Bonds asterisk.
So, like, 4 iPhones (Score:2)
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The local chemist can't remotely track down stolen drugs. They can't block them from being used either.
They can't just "forget" they were stolen and receive profits from app store purchases either.
They'll also probably get shut down if they're not properly securing their stock.
So while Apple could potentially profit from the theft, the chemist faces going out of business.
Time to admit phones are tracked and start blockin (Score:2)
If Australia can do it we can too. Every phone, sim card or not has a personal identification number. It's 100% possible to implement a database of phones and prevent carriers from registering stolen and lost phones. If we did this we could actually motivate people to do the right thing and return phones to their owners.
The carriers and manufacturers don't want to do it because stolen phones increase sales of replacements.
Lax Security (Score:1)
This was pretty genius! (Score:2)
This was pretty genius!
I guess that's why they let them past the "Genius Bar" and into the back area.
You'd think there would have been a badge reader, though...
Authentication (Score:2)
Thieves (Score:2)
#can't-take-a-joke
bad security (Score:2)
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This hasn't been news for nerds for quite a while. That disappeared a while ago. It's really tech news, which basically only has to mention a tech company or liberal news because the internet doesn't have enough of that. Basically, you can get the same news everywhere except here you get some amusing AC trolls.
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The real story here is that $16,000 of boxed iPhones will fit under a t-shirt.
Re: Reason to be here... (Score:1)
See now that's technology we can get behind, um...so to speak. New use for existing technology.
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/3... [ebay.com]
That could be painful...
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Obviously for iPhone.
I just pretend it's here for the social engineering angle.
As previous Apple advertising said... (Score:2)
"Think Different." Apparently that worked wonders at Apple Store for a couple of enterprising thieves.
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This is news because even at those prices they're too expensive?
The thieves are idiots because Apple probably has the serial numbers of those stolen iPhones and thus will nuke them from orbit?
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"The thieves are idiots because Apple probably has the serial numbers of those stolen iPhones and thus will nuke them from orbit?"
And given a serial, each one will report its GPS position to the holy city of Cupertino on request.
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The thieves aren't idiots, they'll sell them to idiots for cheap.
Re: Reason to be here... (Score:1)
Don't nerds talk about social engineering?
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That's not "social engineerineg" that's Security by letterhead [schneier.com].
Or T-Shirt, in this case,
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I don't hate gay people (simply out of a lack of self hate), I just hate spam.
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Please pray for them or do otherwise nothing, just as long as you finally stop spamming about it.
Re: Florida shooting travesty. Pray for victims... (Score:1)
Isn't praying for them doing nothing anyway?
Re: Florida shooting travesty. Pray for victims... (Score:1)
But you don't find people alarmed at all of Cristendom because Timothy McVeigh was a Roman Catholic. Some terrorist attacks are religiously motivated, some are not. And when it comes to religious motivation, the crowning achievement in religious terrorism by far was the European Crusade
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To be fair, the entire ISIS thing is religiously motivated, the first I standing for "Islamic". They claimed responsibility for the attack.
Re: Florida shooting travesty. Pray for victims.. (Score:1)
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They claimed responsibility for the attack.
Well of course they did.... claiming responsibility is what they do best.
What is the "Genius Bar"? (Score:2)
For people who are not into Apple's Newspeak, what is a "Genius Bar"? Is it the sales counter?
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For people who are not into Apple's Newspeak, what is a "Genius Bar"? Is it the sales counter?
It's a place you go to to be told your machine's behavior is normal. Apple users have to worship there once a year or so to remain active in the fanbase.