Apple offers a Find My iPhone app to help ill-fated users recover stolen handsets, but one recent victim relied on a much more a cunning stunt to reacquire his beloved smartphone.
Nadav Nirenberg, 27, left his iPhone 4 in the back of a New York taxi on New Year's Eve and, much to his surprise, woke up the next morning to see registration emails from dating app OKCupid.
Lots of winks and smileys
Nadav decided to set up a fake profile, in which he used "lots of winks and smiley faces so I would seem like a girl" in order to lure the rapscallion into a date he certainly had not anticipated.
He grabbed a picture of a random lady (with just about enough cleavage to be intriguing) from Google Images, named the chesty woman Jennifer Gonzales, 24, and then played a waiting game.
Sure enough, the misguided iPhone thief hit him up with a "U wanna meet" message minutes later and the trap was set. Nadav said he'd like to meet at "her" place.
When the short, cologne-clad thief knocked on the door clutching a bottle of wine, Nirenberg, walked up behind him wielding a hammer and demanded his phone back.
Naturally the thief obliged and was generously gifted a $20 bill for returning the phone before skulking away, hopefully to reflect on some of the poor choices he had made in his life to that point.
"It's pretty rare to get your phone back," said Nirenberg, who did not contact the police afterwards. "I feel pretty giddy."
Via New York Post
