Dateline takes on iPod thieves

Frustrated iPod owners are angry, their music taken from them by thieves Dateline caught on hidden camera.

On Dateline Wednesday, Dateline investigates if it's possible, using some of the same high-tech capabilities that make the iPod the phenomenon it is, to track down people who take iPods that don't belong to them.

The iPod -- it's everywhere. Originally billed as "a thousand songs in your pocket," it can now hold up to 20,000 songs, 100 hours of video, 25,000 photos--and with a staggering 110 million sold, the device has become an international icon and in an indispensable part of life.

But as you've just heard--if you've got to have it, so do thieves.

In Los Angeles, robberies of iPods and other gadgets shot up 34 percent last year.

In San Francisco, iPod robberies nearly doubled.

The crime wave has led to some schools across the country banning iPods!

Even Apple admits the problem is serious, sometimes leading to injuries of iPod owners, in once case in New York City, even tragedy.

The theft is so common, thieves have led to a new term: i-Jacking.

Richard Kenney is a New York City Police Department Burglary Detective.

Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent: Have you talked to other detectives in other cities?

We met the detective when a Dateline senior producer's son had his iPod stolen.

And we wondered, since the iPod is such a high-tech marvel capable of communicating with a central database each time it's plugged into a computer -- if an iPod went missing, maybe there was some way to find it.

Alain Ferry wondered the same thing when he lost his girlfriends’ iPod.

But how? Would there actually be a way to track down stolen or missing iPods?

If you own an iPod, you already know that when you first buy it, you plug it into your computer and register it with Apple. Apple files the iPod's serial number and requests personal information like your name and address.

Then, each time you want to download or purchase a song online from iTunes, your computer communicates with a central database at Apple. If you buy a song, Apple requests credit card information.

And it's because of all that identifying information that some consumers are convinced iPods can be tracked if they're lost or stolen.

Since Apple is in the best position to track iPods, we called the company to see if it would work with us on a story that set out to answer whether a stolen iPod could be traced.

Apple declined.

That left us with one option.

We'd have try to track down some missing iPods ourselves.  Track them down, using the same kind of information Apple might have at its disposal.

We had one overburdened detective in our corner.

And if we could show it's possible to track down iPods, it might give at least some thieves second thoughts about taking them.

One iPod we tracked was taken. It would disappear on the streets of Santa Monica.

Can we find the thief and the iPod? We're about to find out.

You're watching an iPod being taken.

In an instant, it's gone.

New York City police detective Richard Kenney admits that if it's happened to you, as things stand now, you're pretty much out of luck.

But detective Kenney thinks he'd be more successful if he could use some of the iPod's own high-tech capabilities to track them down.

Obviously most iPods that are stolen aren't new in the box, they're like this one. Police like detective Kenney imagine a crime-fighting scenario like this:

If this iPod was reported stolen, the real owner could supply his name, address and the serial number of the device to authorities or to Apple.

Then, if a thief tried connecting the stolen iPod, a central database could detect its serial number -- or other personal data embedded in that machine -- to immediately flag it as stolen.  

And if the thief supplied personal information when he tried buying songs from the iTunes database, or by answering other questions on-line, he could be located and arrested.

But since we aren't Apple, and we don't have our own iPod database, how could we possibly test the theory?

We'd have to have a plan.

First, we went shopping. We bought dozens of iPods. These were iPods that we'd use as bait to be stolen -- or deliberately lost.

We hired a software company, Blackfin Tech, to help us. 

Jefferson Jewell runs Blackfin. His solution?

To simply demonstrate whether an iPod has the capability of being tracked, we'd create our own database -- just like Apple has.

We'd try to get basic information from whoever plugged it in, in this case from people the iPods didn't belong to.

How would we get the information? Instead of putting used iPods out as bait, we'd use new ones that were brand new in the box.

To a thief, they'd be exactly like the real thing.

Except for this: with a new iPod, the first thing you normally do is download Apple iTunes software, which allows you to buy and download music as well as provide basic information about the user to Apple.

To get our bait iPods to work, whoever takes them will have to install a disc. What they won't know is that when they click 'I Agree' on a licensing agreement that appears on-screen, they'll be consenting to provide some of the same kind of information they provide Apple to Dateline.

Now it was time to see if our plan would work.

First, how do thieves usually steal iPods?

We'd seen store surveillance video of thieves in Minnesota and even seen an airline pilot who authorities said was caught on tape stealing a passenger's iPod in a Florida security line.

And NYPD detective Richard Kenney says while some iPods are stolen in burglaries...

So that's how we decided to get our iPods taken -- by just leaving them some place unattended.

First stop? Berkeley, Calif., where police told us there'd been a rash of iPod thefts and robberies near Berkeley High School..

Our Dateline producer places the brand new iPod, still in the box, on the dashboard of our convertible.

Incredibly within seconds a group of students comes along and our iPod is gone.

We put out another iPod. To their credit, dozens of students walk past without taking it. But then, watch these two: they walk past our car, see the iPod, and soon after, one turns around to grab it from the dash.

As they walk away, they look pleased with themselves and their new stolen iPod.

But how happy will they be if we can find them?

Next stop, Fisherman's Wharf, across San Francisco Bay. We left iPods in shopping bags on benches and walked away as if the owner had momentarily left them behind or as if the bag had been forgotten.

What would you think if you found something like this in a crowded tourist area?

Would you think the iPod didn't belong to anyone?

Watch this young man. With our producer just a few feet away, he sits down, biding his time. And minutes later, watch his hand as he grabs the iPod before he stands up and walks away.

Does he think he's found an iPod? Or does he know he's doing something wrong?

But teenagers wouldn't be the only ones taking our iPods. This woman notices our bag and soon sits down next to it. After a few seconds, she takes the iPod and places it in her shopping bag before hurrying away.

So far, four iPods: missing in action in the Bay area. But before we try to track them down, we plant more.

Next, we travel to several malls in northern New Jersey, where we watch as this young woman takes our iPod left atop a car in a shopping bag and skips happily away.

Remember, detective Kenney said most iPods are taken when they are inadvertently left somewhere.  So we go inside the mall and leave our iPods on benches as if we're a shopper who's simply walked away. Will anyone turn the iPods into lost and found? Or will they take our iPods home?

First, we watch as this young man grabs a black canvas bag we put down bearing an iPod. In case you're wondering if he understands the moral issues in what he's doing, he does return the tote bag to lost and found, but he takes the iPod that was inside.

Again and again, people walk away with our iPods.

This woman doesn't even hesitate. She grabs a shopping bag with our iPod inside, turns around and is gone.

Our unattended iPods seem to be like magnets.

How would you feel if you went to a food court in a mall, got up to buy a snack and left your new iPod at your seat and this happened?

Check out this couple as they take the iPod from our table. 

It's enough to make you lose your appetite.

We even see young children, like this boy who takes our bag and then hands it to his mother.

We should point out that not everyone in every city we went to took the iPods left by Dateline. Time and again, people sat down next to the iPods and did nothing. Others, like this mall employee, were curious enough to look in the bag but when they  realized the value of the iPod inside waved down security. They did the right thing, but many others did not.

We move on to Las Vegas, where more iPods are taken.

Again, we hit the food court in a mall and leave the iPod on a table,  as if a shopper had simply put it down, then walked away briefly to grab lunch. Minutes later, this young man appears, finds our iPod, and after a brief discussion with a friend, disappears with it --  even though security guards are standing no more than a few feet away.

Then, in the same mall, we leave an iPod on a bench. Watch this man find the iPod, discard the shopping bag it came in, and nonchalantly walk away with his female companion.

Would we ever see this iPod again?

We'd soon find out--but there would be more iPods to disappear.

We visit the historic Fremont district of Las Vegas.

Watch this woman. She looks at the bag, walks around it for several minutes, apparently checking to see if anyone is watching. And then she makes her move.

She grabs the bag and disappears into the crowd.

And this man did the same. He moves in as all the tourists let down their guard, watching a loud light show overhead. He takes the unattended bag with our iPod inside and casually saunters away.

Finally, we come to our last stop: Santa Monica, Calif. We leave shopping bags with iPods inside on benches at the Third Street promenade.

It wasn't long before they're all gone. Taken…

...by this man out for a walk with his dog…

...this maintenance man…

...and finally, this woman, who wastes no time picking up the bag.

Watching so many people walk away with iPods that didn't belong to them didn't seem to surprise NYPD detective Richard Kenney.

Now, we'd had a total of 20 iPods taken by people they didn't belong to. 

If one of these was your iPod, would you want to know who had it?

Would you want to know who was dancing down the street with your headphones in their ears?

Remember: none of the people who took our iPods realize that when they install the software they're not just going to be supplying information to Apple.

They're going to be talking to Dateline.

We had watched our iPods disappear in cities across America -- in Las Vegas, in Paramus and Wayne, N.J., in San Francisco, Santa Monica, and in Berkeley.

We called Apple's corporate security line as an average consumer to see if it often receives calls about stolen iPods.

And if we were your average music lover, we'd probably be out a $250 iPod.

Remember, the people who lifted them don't know we're tracking them, using some of the same information they provide to Apple when they register a new iPod.

First, remember that iPod taken from Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco? The one picked up from a bench?

Just five days later, someone hooks it up to a computer and uses our installation disc and registers a real address in Fairfield, Calif.

That's how simple it was for us to track down and locate one of our missing iPods.

We want to talk to the person who has it; find out who would take an iPod that didn't belong to them.

We need a cover story.

So we rent this 32-foot RV and attach a banner proclaiming that the 30th anniversary music giveaway is in town. 

To get them into the RV we'll be telling the person who has our iPod they've won iTunes gift cards, good for free music, if they come into our fully equipped, giveaway RV.

What they won't know is that the RV is fully equipped with hidden cameras.

It was now time to hit the road and head to the address where our iPod was located, 48 miles from where it was taken. Our Dateline producer knocks on the door.

A young man agrees to come on board our RV.

This 17-year-old high school junior told us his brother, who wasn't home, had registered a new iPod a few weeks before after he got it as a gift.

And where does he say the friend's dad got it?

It's time to show him our video from Fisherman's Wharf.

It became apparent that at least in some cases, the kind of person who would take an iPod is going to be an impulsive teenager.

The people would probably not really be a criminal. So we decided to disguise the identities of the minors in our story.

Their parents declined comment for our story.

Next stop: Berkeley, Calif., where you'll recall just outside Berkeley High, we watched another young person snatch an iPod from our convertible.

Whoever ended up with our iPod, plugged in the installation software and registered, not only with Apple but with Dateline, to an address that led us 15 miles north of Berkeley to the town of Hercules, Calif.

Out comes this young man, ready to claim his gift card inside the RV.

Another 17-year-old who may not have thought about the consequences of his actions.

It's time to tell him why we're here.

He'll soon be on his way back to the house, where he'll have to figure out what to tell his family, who later called what the young man did, an 'embarrassment' and offered to pay NBC for the iPod.

But ironically, it turns out he wasn't able to enjoy our iPod very long. He says it was stolen from him!

Our iPod has been stolen again.

More of our missing iPods were phoning home with their locations. Next, they were calling us back to Los Angeles, where three weeks earlier we'd had four iPods taken that were left in shopping bags.

One of the iPods was traced to this woman, who we found at a record store she owns in L.A.

At first, she is thrilled by our visit.

What became apparent in this case was that this woman who ended up with the iPod wasn't actually the person who took it. 

She may think it came from a Best Buy, but I showed her where it really came from.

On her way out the door, she gives us back the iTunes gift card.

Later, she calls: her husband told her he'd bought the iPod not at Best Buy, but at a flea market.

We've shown that it's possible -- even easy -- to track and locate stolen iPods.

But there are more surprises to come, from people who have no idea they're in possession of a stolen iPod.

We'd successfully tracked down two missing iPods taken in the San Francisco Bay Area.

And we followed another one in Los Angeles, picked up from a bench and sold at a flea market -- days later, given as a gift, to this woman.

And remember, we were able to track all of them down simply because the users sent personal information  about themselves once they registered our missing iPods. They registered not just with Apple, the manufacturer, but also with Dateline.

Remember this iPod, shown being lifted in the Fremont District of Las Vegas?

When we checked the registration, it led us to this woman, not your average iPod customer, in the small town of San Jacinto, Calif.

And it didn't take long for her to guess who we were.

Obviously she's not the person taking it on the video. She told us, she got it as a gift.

The iPod had traveled 260 miles from where it was stolen, and this hard-working woman began to worry she was in a bit of hot water, especially because she knew who we were.

So where did her husband say he got the iPod?

Next, it was time to move on to New Jersey, where we'd had five iPods pinched from parking lots and shopping malls.

First stop: the town of Kearny.

This 17-year-old has registered our iPod but didn't use his real name.

However, after installing our Dateline disk, he agreed to reveal the identity of his computer via things like e-mail accounts and personal websites. We don't know if Apple has access to the same information when iPods are plugged into computers, but it did allow us to learn his real identity.

And while he lied about his name, he did admit how he got the iPod.

And the videotape backs up his story -- to a point.

Attempts to reach this young man's parents were unsuccessful.

On his way out, he tells us he didn't even keep the iPod but gave it to a friend.

Remember this iPod taken off the roof of our car at the mall in Paramus, N.J.?

It found its way to the town of Clifton.

The college sophomore who filled out our online tracking registration with her real name and address told us she got it the same way most people do. She bought it.

But the video doesn't exactly show her purchasing it at a Best Buy.

Her defense?  She'd been a victim of iPod theft herself! And this was a way to even the score.

Then she does something we haven't seen before. She gives the iPod back.

Another lost iPod has been found simply by using the online registration information.

Finally, it's time for us to try and track down the rest of our missing iPods in Las Vegas.

We find one in the hands of yet another 17-year-old, and like so many others he claims it was purchased legitimately.

But minutes later, after he's seen our video of him picking up our iPod from a table in the mall food court -- then walking away -- he appears to have learned a lesson, and has some advice.

This young man's father later tells Dateline he thought we were unfairly tempting kids to take iPods.

And finally, we meet this man..

He filled out our online registration using his real name and address.

First he tells us he bought the iPod. Then he says he found the iPod.

But none of this explains the video we have of someone who looks just like him lifting the iPod off a bench in a mall.

His response?

We'd tracked down 12 of the 20 missing iPods.

Some of those taken would never turn up because no one ever bothered to register them. So we can't be sure if any of these people actually tried to find who really owned the iPods in order to return them.

We do know it was easy to locate the ones that were registered.  And we did it using some of the same information that owners provide to Apple when any new iPod is registered.

We'd watched 20 iPods get picked up, grabbed by people who didn't own them.

We saw them disappear in cities from coast to coast. 

Some people who took the iPods still had them, but others had no idea they were stolen.

Either way, using basic information similar to what Apple gets when an iPod communicates with its database, we'd successfully tracked down more than half of the missing gadgets.

Remember, all we did was put out new iPods to get our information when the machines were registered online.

We know some stolen iPods could probably never be tracked, because some are probably never hooked up to a computer.

But the question is, if we were able to track iPods could Apple do something similar -- or something else -- to discourage theft?

There are some iPod owners who believe the answer is yes.

But when this man, whose iPod was stolen, called Apple for help…

And that's the same message received by Alain Ferry when his girlfriend's iPod was stolen.

Ferry called Apple thinking because of all the technology at its disposal that the company could trace it for him. 

Apple said it couldn't help.

So, Ferry started a campaign of sorts. First, in 2006, the law school graduate set up a Web site called stoleniPods.com. He asked for comments from visitors and received thousands of e-mails like this one…

But what began with e-mails has become a movement of angry iPod owners convinced Apple could find their iPods -- and the thieves.

We should say that many of iPod's competitors in the mp3 market apparently don't do anything more than Apple does to track missing machines.

But it's not uncommon for high-tech companies to help when some products are lost or stolen.

If you lose your cell phone, some wireless companies will shut it off and flag the phone as stolen if it's ever brought in for service.

If your computer's lost or stolen, software like Lojack for laptops can lead you to it.  The computer, when hooked to the Internet, sends a silent signal to the headquarters of Absolute Software in Vancouver, British Columbia -- and voila! Police are alerted about where to find the stolen item.

And if you call Hewlett Packard, Dell or Gateway, to name a few, their customer service reps will take down a computer's serial number and flag it as stolen if it ever turns up.

But what about Apple?

Detective Richard Kenney's called the company for help solving cases involving stolen iPods.

But with 110 million iPods out there and sales dwarfing those other products, maybe the answer he got is not so surprising.

Watch what happens when we asked this retired detective we hired as a consultant to call Apple corporate security. He introduced himself as an investigator attempting to get information about a stolen iPod.

Here's another scenario. What if you found someone's iPod and wanted Apple's help returning it?

This woman bought an iPod from someone she met in a bar.

She began to suspect it was stolen when she noticed someone else's name engraved on the back. She then contacted stoleniPods.com founder Alain Ferry, who put her in touch with Dateline.

We decided to try to help solve her problem. So we sent her to an Apple store in New York City to try to return the iPod, with a hidden camera recording her every move.

She then went to a second Apple store.

The manager at this store did look up the iPod's registration and serial number.

And that's what happened.

The manager returned this stolen iPod to its rightful owner.

This iPod story has a happy ending.

It's exactly the case Alain Ferry, who runs stoleniPods.com, has been trying to make.

And guess what? We just learned that Apple may be doing exactly that, and may end up being the hero of our story.

We'd paid a software company $40,000 to come up with this: a disc we slipped into packages of brand iPods. And when those who took our iPods installed all the software, this Dateline disk helped us learn the location of whoever took the iPod.

We were able to zero in on more than half.

And police officers like detective Richard Kenney of the NYPD says if Apple does what we did, it would stop iPod crime in its tracks.

Is he right?  We went straight to the horse's mouth: the people who took our iPods.

And calls for Apple to take action are being heard not just here, but around the world.

In England, a top government crime-fighting official who left office just last month had a message for manufacturers like Apple.

Steven Levy is a senior editor at Newsweek magazine and the author of "The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness."

And although Apple declined our requests for interviews and comment regarding this report, the company -- which consistently ranks at or near the top in customer satisfaction surveys in the tech world -- might well turn out to be the hero in our story after all.

Why? Just recently came word from the U.S. Patent Office that Apple has applied for a new patent. In its application, Apple confirms that there is a “serious problem” with iPod theft and that iPod owners have been seriously injured or even murdered for their iPods. And the company has proposed an ingenious solution to the problem: essentially, you can't recharge the iPod or the new iPhone if you can't prove the device is yours when you hook it up to iTunes.

Until Apple follows through with the plans outlined in the patent, others have rushed to meet demand for someone to do something about stolen iPods. Alain Ferry has turned stolenipods.com into a business venture: unloseit.com, which bills itself as earth's lost and found center, and uses a system of stickers and rewards to reconnect lost or stolen gadgets with their owners.

Other companies like Gadget Track use tracking software. Another firm, Stuffbak.com, like unloseit.com, uses a system of stickers to help recover gadgets and other property.

After all when it comes to iPods, people will do almost anything to get theirs back. Alain Ferry, and some of those who first asked for help, just went out and bought new ones.

And Steven Levy?

He had his precious iPod stolen too. But he's getting by and using an old one for now.