If you have a cell phone delivered to you, police are asking you to either sign for it and arrange for it to be sent to you, or to pick it up at a store. Thieves across the country, including the Detroit metropolitan area, are targeting these devices.
It is unclear how closely, if at all, these thefts are linked.
It appears that the thefts started in Troy last month.
A 23-year-old man was arrested there and arraigned in District Court last week, where he was charged with five counts of theft. He was wearing an Amazon vest, bucket hat and mask and was driving a silver Dodge Caravan.
Police said the thefts are part of a growing trend, also known as porch piracy, in which valuable packages of all kinds arrive and are left unsecured outside residences, before being removed. They are often stolen and sold for cash.
In some cases, automatic door cameras have helped catch pirates, but police say the best way to prevent theft is to make sure packages are signed for or delivered to a secure location where they can’t be easily picked up. He said that it is important to make sure that this is done.
In Texas, a Houston television station reported that two teenagers who flew into the state after chasing a FedEx truck in a rental car were arrested and charged with stealing a cell phone. A new report says they were arrested because they didn’t realize their rental car had a dashcam and was recording them everywhere they went.
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Cellphones were also stolen in the Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, areas, news reports said.
In August, a California woman was fed up with packages being stolen from the Los Alamos post office, so she sent an Apple AirTag to herself. Police tracked the device to two suspects who were arrested and charged with conspiracy and identity theft.
Also, in a suburb of Reading, Pennsylvania, cell phone theft schemes are so prevalent that two thieves arriving at the same time and targeting the same package get into an argument over the package, which is caught on surveillance video of the house. was recorded in.
“Within seconds of the delivery, doorbell video showed two men in separate cars sprinting toward the residence,” KABC-TV reported in June. “When they both got to the porch, they started shoving and swinging each other, and one even tried to pick up a flowerpot and brandish it as a weapon.”
There was only one suspect in Troy.
But police say the man, Johanger Melo, was looking for the house where the iPhone was delivered. When he found the iPhone, he walked to the front door carrying a small empty package and picked up the iPhone box to leave, police said.
Police said Melo was arrested when an officer spotted his silver van and stopped him for a traffic violation.
Police added that the driver was wearing the same Amazon vest, hat and mask as in the theft recording.
Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.
