A Best Buy employee is accused of a MacBook rebate scam, a man is wanted for stealing MacBooks, and a campaign report says a former senator spent inappropriately on Apple products, all in this week’s Apple Crime Blotter.
Latest in Occasional AppleInsiderlooking at the world of Apple-related crime.
Man accused of stealing 60 iPhones from Walmart
An upstate New York man has been accused of stealing more than 60 iPhones worth nearly $52,000 from an area Walmart.
For Finger Lakes 1the arrest comes more than three years after the initial theft, which occurred on February 2, 2023. According to police, the man posed as an Outsourced Sales Executive (OSL) employee to gain access to the store’s master keys.
After a year-long investigation, a 32-year-old man was arrested following a traffic stop.
Best Buy employee accused of MacBook discount fraud
A man who worked at a South Florida Best Buy has been charged as the mastermind of a scheme that defrauded the store’s rebate system of more than $118,000.
According to CBS12the employee made 97 transactions for himself and 52 for others during 2024. The man was found to have stopped “multiple Apple MacBook Pro laptops”.
Former senator accused of spending nearly $8,000 in campaign funds on Apple products
A campaign watchdog group has accused the former U.S. Senate campaign committee of improperly spending $700,000 in campaign cash on personal expenses after she left office in January 2025 in a federal filing.
Amid the reported improper spending by former Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, $7,975 was on Apple products, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission by the Campaign Legal Center. These were ‘subscriptions’, ‘computer hardware’, ‘telephone equipment’, ‘technical support’ and ‘Apple Care support’.
For Arizona Mirrorformer officeholders are given a “six-month cut-off period for legitimate expenditures necessary to end a campaign” during which spending is allowed, but the Campaign Legal Center brief says Sinema’s spending came after that cutoff.
Also included in the complaint were improper expenses “tickets to events, airfare, expensive hotels, meals and even continued salary payments to former employees.”
Man wanted to steal $7,000 in MacBooks
Police in Chesapeake, Virginia are searching for a man they say stole nearly $7,000 worth of MacBooks from an electronics store.
“The suspect removed several MacBook laptops from their packaging, hid them and left the store without paying. The total loss was approximately $6,858.96,” Chesapeake Crime Line reported.
According to the shared address, the store is Walmart.
Jeffrey Epstein bought an Apple Watch for Steve Bannon
In addition to the Hermes Apple Watch he gave to attorney Kathryn Ruemmler, Epstein also gave the Apple Watch to other friends, including future Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
According to emails from the Epstein files recently released by the Justice Department and cited Washington Free BeaconEpstein gave Bannon an Apple Watch in 2019.
“Steve got his Apple Watch!” Bannon’s nephew sent an email to Epstein’s assistant in January 2019. In 2018, he gave Ruemmler, who resigned from Goldman Sachs in early February, a 2018 Hermes Apple Watch.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and was found dead the following month. Bannon was working on a never-before-released documentary about Epstein that year.
Israeli teenager’s iPhone lands in Iran
It’s not uncommon for a lost or stolen iPhone to disappear from an American city and end up days or weeks later in China.
But the new story offers a more rare story: An iPhone belonging to a teenager from Israel later turned up in Iran.
According to Ynet NewsThe 16-year-old Israeli’s iPhone went missing at Dubai International Airport in July and later turned up in downtown Tehran, according to tracking data. Israel and Iran went to war last month.
The teenager left the iPhone missing at the airport and didn’t realize it was gone until he got on the plane back to Israel. The Find My iPhone app showed the device still in Dubai.
In October, a family friend of his was in Dubai and went to Lost and Found, but staff refused to hand over the phone or allow 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 at the airport, a follow-up check found the iPhone was in Tehran.
“My son didn’t even get a chance to upload pictures from his holiday in Thailand to the cloud,” the teenager’s mother told the newspaper. “We hope that whoever is holding it in Iran will at least upload the photos so that the memories are not erased.”
Gangs in London are recruiting teenagers to steal iPhones
A new crime ring in London involves criminal gangs recruiting teenagers on Snapchat to steal iPhones.
According to The Guardiancriminals are offering “rewards of up to £380” (about $511 in US dollars) for the latest iPhones.
The Metropolitan Police say they are using tools such as drones and Surron ebikes to pursue suspects involved in this particular crime. While overall phone thefts have fallen by 12 per cent over the past year, 71,000 were still stolen in London last year.
Man accused of tracking ex-wife with AirTag
A Florida man was arrested in mid-February after an AirTag was found on his ex-wife’s car. For Gulf Coast Newsthe ex-husband was accused of installing a surveillance device without consent.
Police did not say how long they thought the AirTag had been there.
Florida’s new Airtag anti-stalking law goes into effect in the fall of 2025.
Stolen iPhone landed at ekoATM in Colorado
A Grand Junction, Colorado man who had his iPhone stolen found it ended up at an ekoATM.
According to 9Newswoman believes she left her phone at the restaurant. When her husband tracked it using Find My iPhone, it went first to a restaurant and later to an ecoATM that was at Walmart.
A Grand Junction police officer met the family and went with them to Walmart where they realized he was in the machine. However, she was unable to get the iPhone back immediately because the verification that allowed it to be returned took “about a month”.
At Walmart, officers also confronted a man who sold an iPhone to a machine who claimed to have found it on the street. The man was not charged with a crime, but ecoATM banned him from using her device.