Crime blotter: Man accused of stealing 60 iPhones from Walmart

A Best Buy employee is accused of a MacBook discount scam, a man is wanted in the theft of MacBooks, and a campaign report says an ex-Senator improperly spent on Apple products, all in this week's Apple Crime Blotter

The latest in an occasional AppleInsider, looking at the world of Apple-related crime.

Man accused of stealing 60 iPhones from Walmart

A man in upstate New York has been charged with stealing more than 60 iPhones worth nearly $52,000 from an area Walmart.

Per Finger Lakes 1, the arrest came more than three years after the initial theft, which took place on Feb. 2, 2023. Police say the man impersonated an Outsourced Sales Leader (OSL) employee to gain access to the store's master keys.

Following a years-long investigation, the 32-year-old man was arrested after a traffic stop.

Best Buy employee accused of MacBook discount scam

A man who worked at a Best Buy in South Florida has been charged as the mastermind of a scheme in which the store's discount system was manipulated to the tune of over $118,000.

According to CBS 12, the employee, over the course of 2024, made 97 transactions for himself and 52 for others. The man was found to have pawned "multiple Apple MacBook Pro laptops."

Ex-senator accused of spending nearly $8,000 of campaign funds on Apple products

A campaign watchdog group, in a federal filing, has accused the campaign committee for a former U.S. Senator of improperly spending $700,000 in campaign cash on personal expenses after she left office in January of 2025.

According to a filing with the Federal Elections Commission by Campaign Legal Center, amid the reported improper spending by former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, there was $7,975 on Apple products. These included "subscriptions," "computer supplies," "telephone equipment," "technical support," and "Apple Care support."

Per Arizona Mirror, former officeholders are given a "six-month wind-down period for legitimate expenses needed to close down a campaign" during which spending is allowed, but Campaign Legal Center's brief says Sinema's spending came after that cutoff.

In the complaint, the improper expenditures also included "event tickets, airfare, expensive hotels, meals, and even continuing salary payments for former staffers."

Man wanted in theft of $7,000 in MacBooks

Police in Chesapeake, Va., are looking for a man who they say stole nearly $7,000 worth of MacBooks from an electronics store.

"The suspect removed multiple MacBook laptops from their packaging, concealed them, and exited the store without paying. The total loss was approximately $6,858.96," Chesapeake Crime Line reported.

According to the address shared, the store is a Walmart.

Jeffrey Epstein bought an Apple Watch for Steve Bannon

In addition to the Hermes Apple Watch he gifted to attorney Kathryn Ruemmler, Epstein also gave Apple Watches to other friends, including future Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

According to emails from the Epstein files recently released by the Department of Justice and cited by the Washington Free Beacon, Epstein gifted Bannon an Apple Watch in 2019.

"Steve has been given his Apple Watch!" Bannon's nephew emailed Epstein's assistant in January of 2019. He had given Ruemmler, who in early February resigned from Goldman Sachs, the Hermes Apple Watch in 2018.

Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and was found dead the following month. Bannon, that year, was working on a never-released documentary about Epstein.

An Israeli teen's iPhone landed in Iran

It's not a rare story for a lost or stolen iPhone to disappear from a U.S. city and end up, days or weeks later, in China.

However, a new story offers a rarer story: An iPhone belonging to a teen in Israel later surfaced in Iran.

According to Ynet News, the 16-year-old Israeli's iPhone went missing at Dubai International Airport in July, and later surfaced in central Tehran, per tracking data. Israel and Iran had fought a war the previous month.

The teenager had the iPhone disappear in the airport and didn't realize it was gone until after getting on the plane back to Israel. The Find My iPhone app showed the device still in Dubai.

In October, a friend of his family was in Dubai and went to the lost and found, but the staff refused to hand over the phone or allow the friends to see it, despite what they described as prior assurances by phone and email from customer service."

But after weeks of the signal continuing to ping inside the airport, a subsequent check found the iPhone was in Tehran.

"My son didn't even get a chance to upload the photos from his Thailand vacation to the cloud," the teen's mother told the newspaper. "We hope that whoever is holding it in Iran will at least upload the photos so the memories won't be erased."

Gangs in London are recruiting teens to steal iPhones

A new crime ring in London entails criminal gangs recruiting teenagers on Snapchat to steal iPhones.

According to The Guardian, the criminals are offering "rewards of up to 380" pounds (about $511 in U.S. dollars) for the newest iPhones.

The Metropolitan Police say they're using such tools as drones and Surron ebikes to chase suspects involved in that specific crime. While total phone thefts are down 12 percent in the last year, there were still 71,000 stolen in London in the last year.

Man accused of tracking ex-wife with AirTag

A man in Florida was arrested in mid-February after an AirTag was found on his ex-wife's car. Per Gulf Coast News Now, the ex-husband was charged with installing a tracking device without consent.

Police have not said how long they think the AirTag was there.

Florida's new anti-Airtag stalking law went into effect in the fall of 2025.

Stolen iPhone landed in an ecoATM in Colorado

A man in Grand Junction, Colo., whose iPhone was stolen discovered that it had ended up in an ecoATM.

According to 9 News, the woman believes she left her phone at a restaurant. When her husband tracked it using Find My iPhone, it pinged first to the restaurant, and later to the ecoATM, which was at a Walmart.

A Grand Junction police officer met the family and went with them to the Walmart, where they realized it was in the machine. However, she was not able to get the iPhone back immediately, as verification that allowed its return took "about a month."

In Walmart, the officers also confronted the man who sold the iPhone to the machine, who had claimed he had found it on the street. The man was not charged with a crime, but he was banned by ecoATM from using its devices.