A blogger had his iPhone swiped on a flight but managed to track it down in a saga worthy of a TV movie of the week, if those still existed. He’s not the first guy to do this, but the story is inspiring every time.

The blogger started off by tracking the phone via Apple’s MobileMe function, then systematically ran the phone down by keeping tabs on the calls placed from his phone.

Here’s the final exchange the writer had with the man who mailed his phone back to him (note: the post uses some coarse language at times):

Ramiro asked, “Who sold you the phone?”

“A friend of mine.”

“Well you have a very bad friend, maybe you should ask him to give you your money back.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he can.”

“Okay, what we can do is, file a police report and have him fined and arrested, then he can pay you back too. We know the —- family that live in [redacted] in LA, the —- who live in Manteca and we know where the robber has been for the past five days. Should we file the report?”

“that’s okay. I’ll mail it.”

The man did mail the writer the device, giving him a happy ending.

iPhones are a bit like carrier pigeons. They’ll come back to you as long as you keep looking.

Busting an iPhone thief [How to catch an iPhone thief]
(Thanks, Alyssa!)

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