AirTag tracking busts rich kid stealing presidential campaign yard signs

If you're planning to steal 60 presidential campaign yard signs, don't just check out the potential penalty, look for an AirTag too.

AirTags have found stolen cars, stolen mail, and unfortunately also been used to track car thief victims. But now one has been used in Springfield, MO, it track down someone stealing yard signs.

No formal charges have been filed yet, and police investigation is still continuing, so it's not fully clear what happened. But it is known that Laura McCaskill and her partner John included an AirTag with their Harris/Walz yard sign, and that was tracked to a car that had around 60 such signs in the trunk.

In a video apparently taken by McCaskill and posted on social media, a mother and her son later described as "entitled," are asked to open the trunk. On revealing the yard signs within, the mother grabs some, and throws them at McCaskill and her partner, saying "Here you go, liberals."

The mother then leaves, and the young man who appears to be her son makes a case that it was all just in fun. He also offers to load the 60 signs into the resident's car.

However, he also very quickly attempts to refute McCaskill's comment that the thefts were of sufficient value to constitute a felony. He says McCaskill is wrong because the signs go for "three or four dollars" on Etsy, so "I mean, six times three, okay."

McCaskill says that the signs cost $20 each. "It's a $2,500 offense in Missouri," continues the resident, "[that's] up to a year of jail time."

"If it exceeds $200," says the young man.

"Oh, you know the law for what you steal?" says McCaskill.

According to local news station Ozarksfirst, this was the fourth time such a sign had been stolen from McCaskill's yard. She decided to add an AirTag, which she and her partner initially tracked to a Springfield restaurant, then on to a home in Nixa.

"If I was just dealing with the young man," said McCaskill, [it] would have been easier to forgive, but the fact that signs were thrown at us and there was no accountability and this was trespassing on 59 people's properties, it was entitlement, is wrong here."

"My primary objective, yes, I think it needs to be called out the behavior," she continued. "I also feel if it was just [my sign], I would not press charges."

"Others are in the neighborhood and filing police reports because this is a very large swathe and is happening in various Springfield neighborhoods," McCaskill continued. "We don't want to cause any harm to the young man or his family, but the attitude is bothersome and I hope that can be turned around for him."

This isn't a partisan issue, though. While the case continues, local Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson said that are penalties for election sign stealing.

"A conviction for any of these offenses shall be punished by imprisonment of not more than one year or by a fine of not more than two thousand five hundred dollars or by both such imprisonment and fine," said Patterson.

McGaskill's sign also had her address on the back, so police allowed her to reclaim it. The remaining signs are being held by the police in case other residents press charges for theft or trespassing.

Note that police -- and AppleInsider -- caution against confronting thieves tracked by AirTags.