Police said thieves drove a car through the glass door entrance of a mobile phone store in Wakayama City on Thursday morning and stole 104 iPhones worth about 9.65 million yen.
According to police, the incident occurred at around 5:10 a.m. at the au Shop Oda, Sankei Shimbun reported. Police said surveillance camera footage showed a silver car smashing through the front door and 5-6 men getting out.
A local resident who heard the noise called 110 but by the time police arrived five minutes later, the men and the car had already gone.
The store is located about 250 meters from JR Wakayama Station.
© Japan Today
19 Comments
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Disillusioned
Soon to be advertised on craigslist and Yahoo auctions. Don't buy new phones in the Internet people!
randomnator
i think these will be going overseas.
Yukiii
I second that they must go overseas and get enough maney advantage.
But Japan police should find them and give them heavy guilty.
igloobuyer
randomnatorMAY. 06, 2016 - 07:53AM JST i think these will be going overseas.
Why bother? There's plenty of market for iphones in Japan, if not more than anywhere else. What I'm wondering is, can't these phones be tracked or something once they are used?
Azzprin
Being Iphones they can be locked and therefore made useless.
Unless they have found a way to unlock them, they be nothing more than paper weights.
jonobugs
I was thinking that iPhones MUST have some sort of feature to make them traceable once they are activated. However, by then the thieves won't have them anymore. A hapless buyer will have it by then. You can easily get an iPhone that is unlocked. I bought mine that way.
nath
Wow! I see a few news one on eBay for less than $300 U.S.!
DaDude
With that money, they can scrap the silver car and get 5-6 new cars.
Citizen2012
Why ? If they are sim-free they can be used in Japan with any Japanese MVNO sim card
randomnator
They were stolen from a communications company which have a default locked setting. Unless the thieves stole the unlock codes at the same time they won't work in Japan with those IMEI. Stolen phones can be traced but cops overseas won't bother with phones stolen in Japan, J cops would care.
randomnator
Phil Smy
Japanese phones are notoriously difficult to unlock. My old AU iphone 5 could not be unlocked, even by an 'expert'. But, if these were docomo phones then there are lots of uses for them - most of the discount carriers (like Rakuten) actually sit on top of docomo's network. I would be surprised if the shop knew all the imei's and even if they did, if the Jcops bothered to do anything about it.
Again, the level of reporting is rather lame. 'Mobile phone store'...which one? 'Silver car'...what model? I thought reporting was about details.
Citizen2012
Indeed, when was the last time a jcop checked somebody's phone IMEI ?
In addition, nothing is telling us the status of the phones, it is possible to imagine that devices are shipped sim-free from Apple and are only locked to a sim-card when a user is buying one...( I am not familiar with the process thought ) , locked phone have almost zero value for either Japanese and WW market but if unlocked, they have both value for WW and Japanese market now, just saying.
Mlodinow
Only Apple sell unlocked iPhones in Japan, so these are also very likely to be sim-locked. Thus, the only reasonable place for them to sell them is here in Japan.
Peter Qinghai
From my understanding, there are no SIM free phones sold by any provider here in Japan. They are worthless, unless they'll be jailbroken.
nath
The IMEI is a firmware ID, it can't be changed or unlocked. Every version of the iPhone has been unlocked and heartbroken, a couple of times before they hit the shelves. In this case, it doesn't matter, because none of that changes the IMEI, and China is the only country that might activate them.
Chop Chop
Like in Australia. Here, thieves used stolen car for to crash shop front door and get away. They targeted bottle shop at night time, Jewellery shop at day time and any shop which can easily entered by crashed. Now Japanese copy cats are copying overseas crimes methods in Japan. Japanese police must prepare for unusual methods of crimes in future.
Peter Qinghai
@Chop Chop I think you're asking too much from JCops...