A Bar? A Church? China? A Stolen Iphone’s Baffling Journey Across The Globe

Baker’s stolen iPhone wasn’t nan only 1 to person pinged from that improbable location. Since precocious past year, dozens of confused and angry group person contacted Christ Fellowship to study that their stolen iPhones were being held there.

“I stopped keeping count,” said Pastor Gideon Apé, “because of really galore group location are.”

The stolen telephone victims person called, emailed and sent hopeless messages via Instagram, Apé said. One showed up astatine nan church’s beforehand doorway pinch a constabulary officer.

The thefts that Ape has heard astir person occurred up and down nan East Coast — from a music show successful Philadelphia to a pub successful Fort Lauderdale. Reports person besides travel successful from Atlanta, Washington, D.C., galore different cities successful Florida and beyond.

The pastor is adamant that location is nary iPhone theft ringing being tally retired of his church, but he’s baffled arsenic to what is really going on.

Thomas Baker.Courtesy Thomas Baker

Douglas McKelway, a supervisory typical supplier pinch nan FBI’s criminal division, said nan logic criminal groups are targeting iPhones truthful aggressively is simple: People transportation little rate these days, and it’s easier than ever to waste stolen phones connected nan achromatic market.

“The phones are fundamentally rate for criminals,” he said.

Baker’s ordeal provides a model into nan shadowy world of iPhone theft rings. It besides illustrates really request successful China for secondhand phones and their parts is helping to substance a surge successful robberies successful nan U.S. contempt efforts by Apple to heighten information connected nan devices.

Ground zero for nan achromatic marketplace successful iPhones, experts say, is nan Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen, an electronics mecca wherever dealers are known to bargain and waste utilized phones nary questions asked. That’s wherever nan phones stolen from galore group successful nan U.S. ping for nan last time, according to interviews pinch aggregate victims and online posts made by others.

While it’s clear why nan phones’ journeys are ending there, it remains a enigma why truthful galore stolen devices are flowing done Miami.

The reply to different mobility is moreover much elusive: If nan phones aren’t being kept astatine nan church, wherever are they?

Unholy accusations

It was precocious August 2024 erstwhile a personification first contacted nan Christ Fellowship religion to study that their stolen telephone appeared to beryllium there. The Instagram connection came from a 27-year-old female surviving successful Kissimmee, a Florida municipality astir 220 miles from Miami.

The timing was strange. The four-story Baptist church, built successful 1926, had been nether renewal since 2018 and was still closed to nan public.

Apé said he didn’t deliberation overmuch of it. Church officials were engaged preparing for nan church’s reopening that December.

About 2 weeks later, a North Carolina female sent a sternly worded Facebook connection to Christ Fellowship. Her iPhone had been stolen astatine a barroom successful Raleigh, North Carolina, connected Sept. 6, and it pinged from nan religion 4 days later.

“Looks to maine you each are moving an cognition present while ‘under construction,’” nan woman, Danielle Connochie, 29, wrote. “I will beryllium contacting authorities.”