The popularity and healthy resale value of the iPhone has made life easier for Dublin's bicycle bandits, CONOR LALLYCrime Correspondent
IT’S A crime that’s almost glorious in its simplicity. A teenager cycling around the pedestrian-busy streets in the business centres of Dublins IFSC, Docklands or south inner city, arouses little suspicion as he winds his way from street to street.
But all the while he is observing the young women around him who’ve just come from their offices. He wants one thing and one thing only: an iPhone.
When he sees one of his potential targets with the Apple telephone pressed to her ear deep in conversation, he makes a few passes on his bike to be sure it is indeed an iPhone.
He makes big loops around her on the pavements and roads, so big in fact that she still doesn’t realise she’s now being monitored closely.
He waits until his target is walking on a stretch of pavement or roadway where he can easily pass her and ride away unimpeded by pedestrian or road traffic congestion.
As he comes level at high speed, he takes one hand off his handlebars, reaches for the target’s hand pressing the phone to her ear and he snatches it from her. In the couple of moments it takes the victim to work out where her phone and conversation have disappeared to, he’s off down the road.
In seconds he has disappeared into a warren of streets.
He then brings the phone to a back street second-hand phone shop, where he sells it, and all the others he has stolen, for about €100 a phone.
The shop owner uses simple technology to wipe it clean of all its data and sells it at a profit to the never-ending stream of people looking to buy iPhones but who might lack the money to pay for a new one.
Gardaí in Dublin city say they first noticed the surge in such thefts about 12 months ago and that hundreds have been snatched since then.
The target is almost always the iPhone instead of other models because they are so easy to spot and to sell on.
And the victim is almost always female, because they are less likely than men to be able to chase a bike moving at speed.
Gardaí have now identified many young criminals they believe are involved in the racket and have raided some of their homes and recovered a small number of stolen phones.
Similarly, some of the shops who do not mind stepping the wrong side of the law to make some money have also been identified and raided.
Gardaí on bicycle patrols have been deployed to the hotspot business district areas at key times and are ready to give chase if they witness an attack or details of attacks are relayed to them over the Garda radio system.
One Garda source said the young women being targeted need to be much more careful. “Holding an iPhone in your hand and being distracted by the conversation is like waving a few hundred euro around.”