For Whom the Cell Tolls? Some people have tried to take matters into their own hands when tracking down a stolen iPhone. As you'll see, there have been very mixed strategies and results for recovery. You can decide if justice was served: A 26-year-old construction worker from San Diego used a location app to successfully track down his stolen iPhone. And when he found the thief, the two got into a physical altercation that ended in the thief getting pepper sprayed and detained by an off-duty cop. And the whole thing was captured on video (below).

Craigslist: iPhone Theft Victims Ended Up With Jail Cells Instead Tracking down a stolen iPhone doesn’t always work out well for the so-called victims: A plot to recover a stolen iPhone that had been listed for sale on Craigslist has landed five men in custody on kidnapping, robbery and child luring charges, police said Thursday. The owner of the stolen phone, who is 15, was also taken into custody in connection with the incident, and was charged with juvenile delinquency because of his age, police said.

OKCupid recovery antics, as told on Reddit: Got my stolen iPhone back by SEDUCING THE THIEF on OKCupid and luring him to my apartment! (I'm a dude) I created a fake email and a half-believable OKCupid account as "Jennifer Gonzalez" - a 24-year-old girl who just moved to Brooklyn and is looking for a man to take her out. I sent a message to the thief (my account) and chatted him up as Jennifer...weird. Little did he know that on his way up the stairs I would pop out behind him, calmly give him $20 for my phone (it was in his hand) and tell him the cops were on the way (with a hammer in my hand). RETRIBUTION! The look of immediate shame on his face was priceless, homie was shook and must feel like an idiot. Dude was all dressed up, had a bottle of wine and stank of cologne. As he was walking away I was surprised I said "You smell great though". Also, "Jennifer" got OKCupid messages from 30+ dudes in the ~5 hour that she existed.

Blogging "Mission iPossible" Some people even blog about their adventures tracking down and confronting phone thieves: Now, put yourself in the shoes of the iPhone thiever who will momentarily be entering the story. You might have told yourself, "Hey, free iPhone!" the night before. You might have seen the gently-threatening messages and ignored them, maybe even scoffed. Then the phone told you it was on Medill St. It talked to you in Spanish. And you saw three skinny white guys prowling in the street with a laptop computer open. So you take off down the road, and to your shock and horror, the honkeys follow you. You stand at your local bus stop, expecting to lose them. And they converge on your location from across the intersection, the bald one with the laptop yelling and pointing at you. You probably think the angels of death have found you ... I shook his hand - Lord knows why I did that - and the three of us walked off. We laughed triumphantly, adrenaline racing, feeling like the Jack Bauer trio. (Disregard the fact that we'd just left a Lego convention.) ... My phone's battery literally hung on until the second it was in my hand. I wuv you, iPhone.

Just played a fun video game. It's called watch your stolen iPhone make its way into South Central in real time. — SethAbramovitch (@SethAbramovitch) June 1, 2013

“The Cops Aren't Going to Find Your Stolen iPhone” So, what do you do if your phone is stolen? You can call the police, but… Sometimes that search traces the device to a building, which isn’t much help as there can be hundreds of apartments inside. When Licata tells people he may not be able to retrieve their iPhone, they’re horrified.

"Apple Picking" Crime Statistics There's big money in stealing and reselling iPhones, which is why “Apple Picking” is on the rise in major cities and even skewing crime statistics upward. In New York City: It has gotten so bad, the police have said, that if it weren’t for Apple picking, crime would have been down last year, when there were almost 16,000 thefts, accounting for 14 percent of all crimes.