Apple store robbed of $500k in iPhones after thieves tunnel through coffee shop | Hacker News Reader

Apple store robbed of $500k in iPhones after thieves tunnel through coffee shop

macrumors.com

71 pointstosh61 comments

> According to Seattle Coffee Gear manager Eric Marks, the coffee shop is not noticeably adjacent to the Apple Store because of the way that the store is laid out. "I would have never suspected we were adjacent to the Apple Store , how it wraps around I mean," Marks told King 5 News. "So, someone really had to think it out and have access to the mall layout."

Is that manager pretending to be dumb? The mall itself provides a map.

https://www.alderwoodmall.com/en/directory/map/

From the map it's clear but I can imagine how someone standing in the public areas of either store would not expect that the Apple store extends behind the coffee shop ("how it wraps around")

From inside the building, it probably just looks like both stores go straight back.

What I find funny is that stuff in Seattle Coffee Gear was (presumably) untouched en route to the Apple Store, but the thieves could have made off with coffee machines and other equipment worth several thousand dollars a pop and zero remote locking mechanisms.

The market for one is much more liquid than the other.

But if they stole the coffee machines, they’d be getting into a lot of hot water.

Plus they are clearly more into apple picking...than daily grinding...

Nice pun

Yeah but...those machines are huge and weigh a lot. Pound for pound, Apple gear is worth much more.

Don't they remotely lock stolen phones so they're largely useless?

The thief only needs to find a buyer who doesn't know this.

There's been a few writers where stolen phones have been tracked back to China where they are stripped into parts, with those parts then being sold on the grey market.

Most of the parts are not locked to the device, with a few exceptions.

> Pound for pound, Apple gear is worth much more.

Once upon a time I looked at my iPod and wondered how much space it would take if I spent an entire year's pay on iPods.

I worked it out and it was kind of depressing to realize that a year of my work would only buy about 1/3 ft^3 of iPods which would weigh under 50 pounds (9000 cm^3 and 23 kg).

If they have the capability to tunnel underground and remove hundreds of pounds of dirt then surely they have the capability to transport an 80lb machine

They didn't do that. They just carved out some drywall between stores. You could do it in a couple minutes with $100 worth of tools (or a sledgehammer, if you wanna go low-tech). Pic: https://twitter.com/coffeemikeatkin/status/16432639396425236...

Those two stores are right in the middle of a long, open pathway. It’s a decent distance to the parking lot. Dragging huge espresso machines would certainly get someone’s attention. There’s truck patrols and foot patrol regularly walk along that pathway.

What's the market for coffee machines? Probably far less than iPhones.

Sure, but they would probably be easier to sell. You need a pretty good story to sell an iPhone new in box, but you could always claim to be a liquidator for a chapter 11 coffee shop and resell the machines.

Can stolen coffee machines be remotely bricked?

Don't give them ideas. We already have offline DRM'd coffee machines.

The market is large enough, there's plenty of coffee fanatics.

Coffee machines usually don't phone home and the good La Marzocco machines are worth as much as a new car. It's quite a liquid market. Furthermore parting them out is highly profitable as the replacement parts from the dealer operates almost like a mob, with some brands requiring replacement parts to be ordered or replaced through certified repairmen.

Plus, unlike a 13-year-old iPhone, a 13-year-old La Marzocco machine is worth something.

Can someone explain this comment from the TFA:

...the coffee shop is not noticeably adjacent to the Apple Store because of the way that the store is laid out. "I would have never suspected we were adjacent to the Apple Store , how it wraps around I mean,"

Google maps show both stores literally next to each other:

https://goo.gl/maps/XcZEdorkPXR57vBCA

I think they are talking about the internal layout of the stores. Like, which specific part of the bathroom of Seattle Coffee Gear opens up into the correct spot at the back of the Apple Store.

That makes more sense. But as posted below, the mall map is pretty clear. Such an easy thing to check by the article writer. Sigh.

Just wanted to give a shout-out to Seattle Coffee Gear. Great local resource for espresso connoisseurs!

Cant they block those device serials from connecting to the App Store and phone network? What am I missing?

They can do more than that, they can brick them: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/06/01/apple-war...

it's always taken apart and sold for parts nowadays

Ahhhhh that makes sense. Thanks for closing the loop in my brain.

I wonder what the economics of a phone chop shop ring looks like.

Don't they do some part of identification for more expensive parts like battery and display so that you can't even switch them between two phones? But maybe I remember that wrong.

It seems like we (good people) would want Apple to prevent these stolen, parted-out components from being used as replacement parts. Apple could prevent that, in theory through software that looks at secure serial numbers from components ... but how will this comport with "right to repair"?

Wouldn’t they detect said parts and have the phone not boot? Seems like a pretty easy fix. All those parts have serial numbers recognized by the OS

Mainboard is hard to swap. But most popular replacement parts are front/back glass and battery. My guess they will find someone to pay for these.

One more reason for Apple to make repairability worse for these parts.

Several commenters are claiming parts. Whats the supply chain here? Is there enough phone repair shops and customers to facilitate the demand?

My friend had his phone stolen in San Francisco (with iCloud lock enabled) and Find my Phone located it in Vietnam a few days later before it finally went dead. All the parts in it are very valuable for chop shops.

> All the parts in it are very valuable for chop shops.

I thought iPhones have some kind detection if parts are changed and it simply stops working.

Only security-sensitive parts won't work (TouchID), for anything else it just warns you that the part is not genuine but keeps working

The fence-your-phone kiosks at US malls ship them off to South American chop shops (Brazil IIRC, 10 years ago).

In the US? Sort of. In the world? Definitely.

That being said, I doubt Apple is going to track it down to such a degree but the screens and the batteries and everything are serialized. They could follow the parts into individual phones if they really wanted to.

If they did it would prevent things like coffee shop tunnels. All you need is for someone to go to an Apple Store guns blazing to steal phones and they would know full well they could have prevented that. Also people get mugged all the time for their phone. They could prevent that!

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/06/19/activation-lock-hel...

> Apple’s own anti-theft measures appear to be working, as The New York Times reports that police in New York, San Francisco and London are finally seeing a decline in theft of the iPhone. The introduction of Activation Lock on iOS 7 has seen iPhone robberies drop 38 percent in San Francisco, 24 percent in London and 19 percent in New York, based on the six months before and after Apple released the feature…

And that's nine years ago.

"Inside The Illicit World Of iPhone Trafficking" <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ws3YptLmLQ>

$500k of iphones that will be hard to sell , and nowhere near $500k. Very clever though. This has been done with jewelry stores, banks, and memorabilia stores. This is why safes and vaults are so important. Of course, safes can be stolen and mounted on a flatbed, so not perfect...

parts

Also the margin is huge so Apple doesn’t pay anywhere near $500k for replacing those phones.

They'll be insured, too.

Old man yells at cloud rant

Sensationalist title. Cutting a hole through the wall is not the same thing as "tunneling". One is a light morning jog whereas the other is an ultramarathon

Rant over

How long before more stores/restaurants/public places start heavily fortifying their locations with more robust security due to these organize theft rings, mass shootings, etc? I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. Mass shootings have been happening for 20+ years and now organized theft is pretty rampant. I'm surprised more businesses aren't run like nightclubs with security that only allows people in/out.

It's already happening. For the past ~3 years, an Apple store in Portland has been either boarded up or protected by a metal security fence to protect from vandalism and looting. They took it down last month, but evidently expect crime to continue: the expensive glass windows were replaced with cheap, ugly plastic panels that are easy to replace when they are inevitably broken into. https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2023/03/apple-fina...

Look up what an "expected value" (EV) calculation is and how it's used. Hint: there's a reason heavy gamblers rarely make good business operators.

Wow Alderwood. I do find it interesting that HackerNews does post stories that are west coast / Seattle centric.

Tunnel through does seem to be a misnomer as it was just drywall and the thieves used razor knives.

I also do wonder how resell works, they aren't carrier locked because they're from Apple - but I would suspect reselling/possessing one in the USA would be questionable and easy to track. Internationally, I'm not sure.

I really like the double-plaster wall that is revealed by the hole in the bathroom picture. If Apple Store storage room is built using only plaster screwed on metal framework, then what else could you expect?

Edit: It also seemed they lack any security in the storage room. Even some simple infrared detectors would have helped there. Total oversight from the security perspective.

Is this one of those times Apple stays mum about what it can do? It was my understanding that the phones can transmit even without a sim card and even while powered "off".

So it would be my guess that Apple knows exactly where these phones are by now.

These will be sold for parts, not whole units. Their location was likely heading out of country soon after they were stolen. They will be broken down, parted, and dispensed with before any authorities can act.

this is straight from https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/8848-the-bank-job

reminded me also of King of Thieves

Can't apple just remotely brick all of them?

I believe the devices that are on display are managed by Jamf and those can be locked/bricked.

Given that an Apple device is entirely useless unless Apple wants you to be able to use it: yes, any user is at their mercy. To do that for this batch, they'd have to know exactly which devices were in that storage area at that time (probably a reasonable assumption as they're expensive each). I might also imagine a world where they realize the sunk cost and they go "well, we lost those things now anyway, might as well make the most of the situation and get more people hooked up with our ecosystem". What they'll end up doing, who knows, but the devices are still valuable for their parts if nothing else. 500k is probably like 500 devices? If someone can sell a screen repair for €150 and keep €100 for how labor-intensive that is, they'd still be happy to give you €50 per device stolen, 50×500=25k€, and that's if you manage to sell only the screen. (I don't know what such a screen goes for if it's brand new; just a sample value to show how even 'for parts' can add up.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com