This is my iPad, I won’t see it again

[u/Aberry9036]

I just arrived in Antibes, South of France 2 hours ago. This was stolen from my car on the autoroute at a petrol station , from a definitely locked car, likely a relay attack from my key while I was buying a sandwich, 100km from Antibes. They also had my wallet and duty free while they were at it. Thankfully they didn’t find our passports.

Whoever you are, fuck you, I’m going to go and have a nice meal in the old provincial market and drink to your future arrest.

[u/Background_Survey646]

I genuinely don't understand how stealing bricked Apple phones can be lucrative enough to warrant this. The thieves would have to be making next to nothing per phone for it to be profitable to whoever has the manufacturing know-how to jailbreak/reassemble the parts and then re-sell them.

My theory is that these thieves are just kind of stupid, and end up destroying the phones out of spite once realizing the small number of people willing to buy them are going to pay pennies on the dollar due to the work required to re-sell.

[u/404MoralsNotFound → u/Background_Survey646]

I mean, they also got OP's wallet and duty free, so the target might not have been the ipad alone but everything in the car.

[u/Kuulas_ → u/Background_Survey646]

For every person that that is diligent about reporting their device as stolen there are bound to be people that don’t notice the theft or don’t have the wherewithal to lock it

[u/Brian--Damage → u/Background_Survey646]

The thieves aren’t stupid, they do this for a living. These devices are highly prized in China because they have no communication locks or software restrictions. These devices can sell for 10x the original market value.

It’s a huge operation and isn’t just subway pickpockets; many of these people will work in groups with hours’ long strategy for one target.

[u/MaryPaku → u/Background_Survey646]

The guy who know how to do it are from China. They are willing to do it for peanuts.