A Woman Mailed Herself an AirTag to Catch Thieves: Here’s Why It Worked [CNET]

This viral reverse heist worked once, but if you want to try something similar you’ll need to get very lucky.

This summer an unnamed woman in Santa Barbara County, California, formed a unique response to ongoing P.O. Box mail theft: She sent herself an active AirTag in a package, and waited for thieves to pick it up. Using the AirTag’s tracking, she found the address where the thieves had taken her package and reported it to the local sheriff’s department.

The scheme, while it sounds farfetched, turned out to be a huge success. Two suspects were arrested, with evidence that more than a dozen people had been robbed before the AirTag trick. If you’ve been experiencing ongoing package theft, you may already be making plans of your own — but wait a moment first. A scenario like this has a lot of moving parts that all worked together flawlessly. If you want to use a tracker to catch thieves, you’ll need to know the challenges. Let’s break down what it takes. 

Buying an AirTag (that you probably won’t get back)

AirTags aren’t the most expensive tracker around, but they’re still an investment. You can find a pack of four for around $100. However, if you really want one to get stolen by a package thief, you’re not likely to get it back. Even if the package is successfully tracked, the AirTag is likely to be collected as evidence and from there, it can easily get lost in the legal system. So there are some upfront costs (in addition to shipping fees).

Mailing your AirTag and hoping to get lucky

You’ve got a fully charged AirTag, you have a package that’s seductively weighted to appeal to thieves, and you’ve paid the shipping costs to send that package to your P.O. box or porch. Now you have to get lucky, and that could take time.

There’s no guarantee your package will get stolen right away. You may have to wait days for something to happen. If thieves are no longer targeting your area, it may not work at all. In some cases, you may need to send the packages through the mail more than once. In other words, this strategy needs some patience.

Relying on more-populated areas

AirTags send information about their precise location by pinging Bluetooth signals off any nearby compatible devices — aka, any active iPhones or iPads around. If there aren’t any active, mobile Apple devices around, then an AirTag doesn’t work very well.

So, if thieves are Android fans and don’t live near other people, you may not be able to track down their destination at all. In the case above, this ploy worked because the suspects were living in a home in the populous city of Santa Maria, California, with enough Apple devices around to make triangulation easy. That wouldn’t work with more-remote thieves. A more expensive GPS tracker may do the job, but that’s a bigger investment.

Contacting police, and having them listen

Here’s another tricky part: The Santa Barbara County case worked only because the woman contacted the local sheriff’s department, explained how she’d tracked the package and provided all the necessary information. Then the sheriff’s department took action. But that doesn’t always happen.

Not many law enforcement departments have a team dedicated to mail theft, or the resources to send people out to explore a tracked location. They may be unlikely to listen to a lone victim who engineered their own plot. Most police departments have only one trick to stop package theft: patrolling the neighborhood a few times. And you can find plenty of stories on Reddit about police who don’t take any action over stolen mail.

So, a lot depends on what your local law enforcement contacts decide to do, and that’s out of your hands. The best you can do is put together a clear record of evidence (including photos and screenshots) as you create, send and track the package, as well as evidence about the other mail you’ve had stolen. We don’t advise you visiting the thieves’ location yourself.

Hoping for a successful investigation

Finally, the tracked location has to yield results, and that often requires lazy thieves. An active theft ring would quickly go through packages, seize any valuables and toss the rest well away from where they live, including your AirTag. Or they might dump everything in bulk on a local black market before police can discover their location. Once again, luck needs to be on your side if you expect any arrests to be made.

So, yes, you can certainly try mailing yourself an AirTag to deal with your theft problem, but it takes luck and work, plus a lot of cooperation from local law enforcement. Keep that in mind before you start licking your stamps.

For other tips on keeping your home safe, check out ways to deter burglars, how burglars choose homes in the first place, the best spots to put security cameras and the best ways to stop porch pirates.