AT&T insider could be responsible for a rash of stolen iPhone 16 deliveries
The timing by the thieves is so precise that the entire crime takes only seconds to pull off from the time the driver of the “follow-up” car opens his front door and runs out of the vehicle, to the time it takes for the thief to drive away with the package containing the iPhone. Many of these operations have been taking place on the East Coast of the U.S. in states such as New York, Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and others.
“They came in and rented two cars from us. They seemed pretty young but didn’t seem like they’d give us too much trouble. We found out they had the dashcam still plugged in, so we said OK, let’s look through this and see what’s going on.”-Desmond Garrick, owner of Ride Away Rentals
The teens were unaware that the rental car had a dashboard camera running which captured their felonious activities over the next 48 hours. The video shows the pair following specific FedEx trucks on their runs. One part of the video shows Perry running to grab an iPhone off of a porch that they had arrived at too early; just a few minutes later, during a return trip to the same porch, she was able to steal the iPhone off of the porch.
How to avoid becoming a victim of porch pirates after your iPhone
Because they were caught with the tracking numbers for iPhone shipments to Houston areas, Dye and Perry had the addresses that the packages were being delivered to along with the time that they were supposed to be delivered. On the dashcam recording, one of the teens tried to get the FedEx driver to hand over a package containing an iPhone directly from the FedEx truck.That iPhone was being delivered to a strip mall. The teen tried to convince the driver that he was the person waiting for the phone by reciting the tracking number.
The big question is how two teens from Detroit were able to get the tracking numbers for AT&T shipments. Law enforcement has been working with AT&T‘s Global Fraud Department in an attempt to get an answer to this question. It’s possible that Dye and Perry were the low men on the totem pole and were paid off by someone inside AT&T who has access to the tracking numbers.