An Irish thief has shot to the top of the list of the country’s dumbest criminals, after he swiped an iPad and uploaded photos of himself on the victim’s iCloud account.
The iPad was stolen from Englishman Ray James who was on holiday in Dublin last month. He described the pictures to the Irish Times: “There’s one of him lying on his back. There’s one of him where he is posing nicely in front of the camera. It’s a classic picture – you couldn’t take a better one yourself.”
Mr James believes his iPad was stolen from his travel bag when he was momentarily distracted after dropping his camera. He realised it was missing about an hour later and retraced his steps but couldn’t find the missing iPad.
He reported the theft to the Gardaí who issued him with a crime number for an insurance claim. When he got home he signed into his iCloud account and discovered several photos had been uploaded since the iPad went missing.
“So I got back on to my iCloud and got set up. All of a sudden, amongst my photographs, were pictures that were taken after it was stolen, of people I have never even seen. I couldn’t believe it. I was just thinking ‘who is this guy?’
“There are also pictures of an iPhone and some jewellery and a handbag and of this guy. What I’m assuming is that whenever this guy takes a picture it sends it up to my iCloud.”
Unfortunately, for legal reasons we aren’t allowed to publish the pictures of the not-so-techie thief. However, thanks to a tracking device that Mr James had installed on his iPad, we are able to tell you that the iPad (not necessarily the thief) was at an address on Old Cabra Road, Dublin recently.
Mr James has passed this information onto the Gards, but says they are not showing a great deal of urgency in solving the crime, despite having several pictures of a suspect and a recent location of the iPad. He said: “They said they hadn’t assigned a detective yet to this case. I haven’t heard anything since. I have these pictures and I know where the thing is, and they don’t seem interested.”
Perhaps they are biding their time, in the hope that in the next few day the thief might tweet his name and address and evidence of other crimes he has committed.