Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief
A Santa Barbara woman used an Apple AirTag to track a mail thief, leading to the arrest of two suspects in Santa Maria for multiple theft-related charges.
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A woman in Santa Barbara, California, frustrated by repeated mail thefts from her post office box, used an Apple AirTag to track down the suspected thief. After several packages had been stolen, she decided to send an AirTag to her own address. When her mail was stolen again, including the package containing the AirTag, she reported it to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office. Law enforcement tracked the AirTag to a location in Santa Maria, approximately 16 miles away, leading to the arrest of two suspects: a 27-year-old woman and a 37-year-old man. The authorities recovered the AirTag package along with items believed to have been stolen from over a dozen other victims. The suspects face multiple charges, including possession of checks with intent to commit fraud and identity theft. The sheriff's department praised the victim for involving law enforcement rather than confronting the suspects herself.
- A California woman used an Apple AirTag to catch a mail thief.
- The AirTag led police to two suspects in Santa Maria.
- The suspects were arrested for multiple theft-related charges.
- The sheriff's department commended the victim for reporting the thefts.
- The incident highlights the growing issue of mail theft in the area.
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7 commentsIf a youtuber can park their car with a ps4 in the trunk and record someone breaking in just a few hours later, I don't see why police can't do this.
And it's only a handful of people engaged in this low level crime. Arrest a few. And if they have a dozen prior arrests, like many of them do, keep them in jail for a while. And if they're doing anti-social crimes like punching random women in the street, remove them from society and let them cool off for a few years (it's almost always 18-29 yos).
Soon the economics doesn't make sense or the worst are spending their most chaotic years in prison. It's quite simple and effective. But for whatever reason, police or prosecutors are uninterested in stopping this type of crime.
All the P.O. mailboxes I've ever seen have locks. What's going on? Was the thief actually a USPS employee?
The underlying issue here is that AirTags do not provide any sort of altitude information. The X/Y resolution is fine grained enough to identify an apartment, but it's not possible to determine what floor it's on without you going in person and using FindMy yourself there, on site, which may be unsafe.
Police may provide an escort for you for this, but you have to be persistent and on top of it, they won't follow up with you.
Having to coordinate with delivery drivers is difficult if you're not home, which is often the case unless you're WFH.
Seems like every front door should be designed in some way to securely leave packages by now.
No, packages should not be stolen from people's porch. But realistically, it's very hard to stop this crime of opportunity.
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