Yet Another Accused Thief Makes Rookie Mistake Of Uploading Pics From Stolen iPad To The Cloud

The funny thing about those who steal technological toys like iPads and iPhones from others is often that they don’t really know the capabilities of the electronics they’ve swiped. Even if they do, incriminating photos have a way of showing up and biting them in the rear. A woman accused of stealing an iPad ended up providing her own mug shot when photos her kids reportedly took were uploaded to the owner’s cloud.

The New York Daily News says the California woman allegedly left a Costco last month with the stolen iPad, and smiled for pictures her children snapped. When she happened to enter an area with Wi-Fi, those shots zoomed up into the Internets and appeared in the owner’s cloud account.

The woman who owned the tablet handed those photos over to police, who posted them on Facebook in an attempt to identify the woman, her husband and another man. From there, a local TV station took over and broadcast the images on the evening news.

Word travels fast once your face is on TV, and the woman’s relatives gave her a heads-up that police were on her trail, a source with the police says. She then walked into a police station to drop off the iPad and claimed she had no idea it was missing property.

“She claims they didn’t steal it, that they just found it in their shopping cart. But for whatever reason, they didn’t turn it in,” a police official said. From there, everything fell together, he adds.

“The woman who lost the iPad said it was in her shopping cart Feb. 18 before she turned her back for a second and turned around to find it was missing. Fast-forward a couple weeks, and these photos she doesn’t recognize just appear,” he explained.

The suspect was cited for misdemeanor misappropriation of property and released pending formal charges from the Fresno County District Attorney, said the police rep, adding that when criminals take technology that they don’t quite understand, it’s “easier” for the police to catch them.

“It’s a nice change,” he admitted.

California woman accused of stealing iPad unwittingly uploads her smiling mug shot to owner’s cloud storage [New York Daily News]

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