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A strange tale of a stolen and recovered iPhone 4

Every once in a while people lose their precious handsets, either unintentionally left behind or stolen. I’ve personally lost 2 iPhones, a Nexus One, an HTC HD7, a Galaxy Nexus and Droid Razr. If only there were more accurate or high-tech ways to recover them.

The most frequent suggestion is to use an app like Find my iPhone (or something similar) to locate the last known location fo the device.

This interesting story that was recently told to me is a bit extra-ordinary.

A messenger was sent to the telco’s Business Center to pay the bills of a customer. While the sales clerk was checking on documents, he intentionally placed his iPhone 4 inside his table drawer which the messenger saw. The sales agent left his station to go to the back of the office and when he came back, finished the transaction and saw off the messenger.

By lunch time, when the sales agent looked for this iPhone 4 inside the drawer, it was already gone. After frantically looking for it, they decided to seek the help of the network engineers and was able to locate where the last signal the iPhone 4 was sending out from (this is where cell site triangulation is done) before it was turned off.

The suspected location was Makati Cinema Square. Several of his officemates then proceeded to the mall and asked around, pretending they were looking to buy several 2nd-hand iPhone 4 units. They were specific with the iPhone’s color and capacity to narrow down the search.

For each iPhone 4 that was presented to them, they would pretend they were just checking the settings when in fact they were already looking for the IMEI number of the device.

After the 3rd device, they finally found the stolen iPhone 4 with the matching IMEI number. Since the incident happened inside the business center, the telco sent out police officers to the mall and confront the stall owner.

And since the usual strategy in malls like MCS is for one stall owner to scout from other stalls for available units (and just get a commission afterwards), the original stall owner that bought the device was already gone by the time the police arrived.

The iPhone 4 was eventually recovered. It was already restored back to the default factory settings but was already upgraded to iOS 5.

The customer who sent his messenger to the business center was also contacted and the messenger was confronted.

Now that was a lucky one. In many cases I’ve heard which is of similar nature, the stolen phones are rarely recovered. This one’s just that lucky.

Update: The concerned person has messaged me last night over FB confirming that this story happened to him, with some slight deviations.

Update 2: Changed some parts of the story as we get additional details of what happened (had to ask for some more questions). Apologies for some of the errors — was writing this while on the road and only had 2 hours of sleep in the last 2 days.

Update 3: Check out how you can try and use Globe Tracker to find a person or handset via cell triangulation here.

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

59 Responses

  1. Avatar for marc marc says:

    weh. hindi to true. walang cctv?!

  2. Avatar for jonaflormicfren jonaflormicfren says:

    Very good!

  3. Avatar for jonaflormicfren jonaflormicfren says:

    Nice!

  4. Avatar for Bim Bim says:

    This happened to me on Baguio City, my phone got stolen (it was a w580i) .Its been missing for a week. One day, I was walking down Session Road when my girlfriend pointed a similar phone(displayed on a stall) and ask me if I miss my phone, I said yes and looked at the markings. To my surprise, it was really my phone. I confronted the stall owner, but we cant leave because we were surrounded by the Muslim vendors. We wanted to ask for the police’s help( about 5 blocks away in session road), BUT, im pretty sure if we leave and did that , They’ll just runaway and bad things will happen on later on. THEN out comes the deal. Just pay 1k and ill get it back, which I did out of adrenaline rush and caution(I know we had the right to file for an anti-fencing in this case),but we just wanted to leave with my phone and our lives intact :)

  5. Avatar for vehicle sticker vehicle sticker says:

    This happens all the time, seems the globe tracker is the way to go. But that service never seemed to make it on a prime time. If im not mistaken their was a tv ad for the globe tracker service but maybe it was too early for the masses to adjust on that technology. I remember it was the era of nokia 3310 :D

  6. Avatar for Grey Grey says:

    Wow! Happy ending! Last time I lost my phone was when we had a drink, the unit, nothing compared to today’s smartphones, was a Nokia 6250. I’m all praises with such apps from IOS and Android, hopefully, local network providers would support this to the end

  7. Avatar for techgazine techgazine says:

    I agree, you can never trust anybody specially iPhone is one hot mobile nowadays.

  8. Avatar for arsie arsie says:

    Whoa! darn that was so close. Indeed he is one lucky person. That is why we should never leave our things unattended.

  9. Avatar for Azalam Azalam says:

    Stop wasting our time with your made up stories.

  10. Avatar for Soul Annihilator Soul Annihilator says:

    To those who commented that cell site triangulation = IMEI tracking, you’re greatly mistaken. I highly recommend doing a little google search first before posting.

    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cell+site+triangulation

  11. Avatar for kgraphx kgraphx says:

    I have a related success story!

    Two years ago, my msi u230 netboook was a week old. It got stolen from my very room. It got robbed by around 3-4am. I woke up with the smell of a fail tear gas. The day was really bad I needed a powerpoint from that laptop. I reported the case to the police but that morning I really had no hope I could bring it back.

    During lunch I was already at work. I got this phone call from a concerned person. I was told the laptop is being sold at greenhills at that moment. Apparently, some neighbors are the ones who stole it and was asking help from this concerned person to help them explain to greenhills security. At greenhills they were asked to operate the laptop but they couldn’t. In greenhills pala you can’t just sell a gadget you have to verify that it isn’t a stolen one.

    So I rushed to greenhills with the police and recovered the laptop. Whew. That night the robbers came to my place to return my IDs and some more accessories. I was not there anymore and I don’t live there now. Bad neighbors.

    • Avatar for Soul Annihilator Soul Annihilator says:

      Dinemanda mo ba yung mga nagnakaw?

      Ang swerte mo dahil nakonsensya yung concerned person an tumawag sa yo. A success story indeed.

  12. Avatar for emignatius emignatius says:

    OT: There’s an app for android devices called androidlost and it’s a great app. You can take pictures remotely, install it remotely in case you lose your phone and you haven’t installed it yet, remotely enable gps and data, and much more. The best part is, it’s totally free.

  13. Avatar for Mitee de la Cruz Mitee de la Cruz says:

    I, for one hate criminals. Pero hindi ba bawal yung ginawa nun CSR na pina triangulate nya yung cellphone niya sa engineering department nila? I know cellphone niya eto at pwede niyang gawin kahit ano. Pero the fact na ginawa yun ng Engr Dept is parang bawal na technology na pwede gamitin kahit kanino even if ka trabaho nila. Even sa mga Engineers. If totoo nga eto nawawalan ako ng trust sa mga telco ng Pinas. :(

    • Avatar for lawrence lawrence says:

      I guess this one is some sort of an exception since nangyari yung crime sa vicinity nila. this can serve as part of the investigation which is important in keeping the security of their offices. they have the facilities, so they can use it for their own benefit I guess.

      the incident I think can reflect the security flaws of the telco’s offices so it can help them improve as a whole. I guess apple can give them these kinds of privileges rin.

    • Avatar for reader reader says:

      @Mitee:

      It could be illegal to triangulate a cellphone signal to locate it. However, two things to consider:

      1. It does potentially clash with a citizen’s right to privacy. You may only legally do this on valid reasons (i.e. solving a crime, national security, etc….)

      2. Do take note that triangulation of a signal does require resources to specifically track it down. Telcos simply cannot do this on a whim. Before we think that telcos can play the role of Big Brother to us, the answer is not as straightforward.

      Technically they can monitor where we are at, but from a logistics perspective, it will cost them too much time and resources to do so.

    • Avatar for Soul Annihilator Soul Annihilator says:

      I completely agree with reader’s point #1. That’s the reason why cell site triangulation will never be made available to normal customers because it can be subject to abuse.

      Tanga na lang talaga yung messenger. I heard a similar story in Smart, may nagnakaw ng CP inside Smart tower’s premises but the CP was never recovered. When they detected where the last signal of the CP was sent out from, it was still inside the premises. That means matalino yung nagnakaw – he turned off the phone first and took out the sim before leaving the premises.

  14. Avatar for coachjojoc coachjojoc says:

    Urban myth?

    • Avatar for reader reader says:

      @Coach: Nope, it’s fact.

      As long as you have someone in the telco do it for you, you can track a cellphone’s signal through triangulation of a signal. It only gives you an estimation of a signals location that’s pretty much it.

      Long time back, I had a friend in a telco track a particular cellphone’s location of a person who I thought to be scamming me for my money. He didn’t have the triangulation done but at least he gave me the closest cellsite to where the phone was actually sending/receiving signals from.

    • Avatar for coachjojoc coachjojoc says:

      @reader,
      Remember those text messages asking you to send pasa load or whatever?

      I wanted to reply “Go f*%k yourself” but here comes my nephew telling me that if I texted back the scammer would be able to get my load and phone details.

      Fact or urban myth?

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