Ottawa woman tracks down, confronts iPhone thief

An Ottawa woman became a temporary detective earlier this month when a thief snatched her purse with her iPhone inside.

The Ottawa Sun reported a man grabbed Yesha Machicao's purse on Sept. 4 while she was pulling her bike out of her vehicle, and he ran off before she could catch him.

Machicao told police in a nearby cruiser, but they were busy with another call, the Sun reported, so she powered up her computer to track her phone's GPS movements through iCloud.

When police at the nearest station told her they couldn't follow the GPS tracker to retrieve her phone, Machicao gathered a small gang of friends and turned vigilante, according to the Sun. She traced her phone to Hull, where she found the man carrying a purse, though not her own, and hollered at him, asking if he'd found a phone.

[ Related: Blog ‘Life of a Stranger who Stole my Phone’ becomes viral online revenge ]

The Sun reported the man dropped the purse, saying he had found it and "he wasn't a bad guy." He walked away, but the dot on the GPS tracker kept moving — he still had the phone.

They followed him into a restaurant where one of Machico's friends asked him directly about the phone, and he said he had thrown it under a set of stairs outside, the Sun reported.

Machicao retrieved the iPhone and called the police, who told the newspaper they had indeed arrested a 55-year-old man in connection with the case.

In a similar case of citizen detective work heard in court this month, a woman in Regina whose phone was stolen from her unlocked vehicle tracked it to a nearby park, then called the phone and watched as a man reached into his pocket, according to the Leader-Post. She called police who arrested the man when they caught him with the phone, the Leader-Post reported.

A Vancouver woman also shared her story of tracking down a thief recently, which took place after she saw an advertisement for her stolen bike on Craigslist. She said she responded to the ad, met the person selling it and cycled away after pretending she wanted to test drive it.