Vanity, thy name is smartphone thief: We’re no strangers to the tale of the narcissistic villain who’s ultimately caught after uploading photos taken on the pilfered phones somewhere the owner can see them. That’s the ending one iPhone owner is hoping for, as she’s been watching the person who stole her device unwittingly send them straight to the owner’s Facebook account.

The 23-year-old Denver woman says she was at a bar last Friday night around closing time, when a woman got a bit too close.

“She leaned in to say something into my ear. Things were loud, and I felt a tug on my purse,” she tells 9News. Suddenly, both her phone and the girl were gone.

Thinking her phone was a lost cause, she logged into Facebook on Monday morning and had a bit of hope spring up, as she started seeing photos apparently taken by the thief upload automatically to a private Facebook folder set up for that purpose. She can then decide whether or not to post them.

The woman she remembers from the bar is going around downtown Denver, snapping pics while she goes, she says.

“It actually becomes a lot more plausible for me to get it back when she starts posting selfies,” she said.

The thief has been stirring up trouble in the meantime — responding to a friend of the owner’s request to pick her up from the airport and saying she would, and then not showing, of course.

Thus far, police have tried calling the phone, and whoever answered said they’d return the phone. That didn’t happen.

Police are now offering a reward of up to $2,000 to find the selife-loving thief.

Again, we’ve seen this resolved happily in the past when such evidence is so plentiful, so there’s a good chance for a positive outcome here, too. As long as there are people who love taking pictures of themselves, there are ways of identifying them.

Selfie-loving iPhone thief taunts owner [9News]

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.