Thief Steals Scooter and Brings It to His Apartment, AirTag Has a Little Surprise

A grandfather from Australia proved to the world that there's no age limit for being a tech-savvy person, as he hid an AirTag into his scooter in case the worst-case scenario happens.

And it happened, as a thief spotted the scooter parked in front of a supermarket, so they didn't miss the occasion and took it away. After a 50-minute trip, the thief arrived home, hiding the scooter in their apartment.

They had no idea their every move was monitored by the small device planted in a place the grandfather didn't want to reveal to the local media. However, the man decided to follow the location of the AirTag, and when he arrived in front of the apartment building, he called the police.

It was only a matter of hours until law enforcement got a search warrant. A few more hours later, the thief was arrested, with the scooter returning to the happy owner.

AirTags are pill-shaped devices that connect to nearby iPhones to share their location with the master smartphone. Apple designed the AirTag to maximize the battery life, so the device doesn't sport built-in Internet connectivity. The CR2032 battery unit inside can last up to six months as the device looks for iPhones in proximity and connects to them to broadcast the location via the Find My network available on all Apple devices, including smartphones and PCs.

The AirTag owner can look up its location by launching the Find My app on their iPhone. The paired device reveals its coordinates when it finds a nearby iPhone, so in an apartment building, it's nearly impossible not to detect an Apple smartphone to send the data. The chances are that even the thief owned an iPhone, so no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't hide the scooter as long as it was in their possession.

AirTags were designed to show anti-stalking alerts on iPhones when the tracker moves with the smartphone. As a result, if the thief had an iPhone, they might have received an alert, but the AirTag was probably so well hidden inside the scooter that the suspect didn't have the time to disable it.

The police needed 30 hours to find the AirTag's location, obtain a search warrant, and break in to recover the scooter and arrest the thief. It's not always that seamless, but the AirTag once again proved that when installed in the right place, it can become a valuable tool to recover your stolen belongings, whether wallets, bikes, scooters, or cars.