Find my iPhone causes iPhone owner to get arrested

In one of the most interesting “Find My iPhone” cases reported recently, a man was sent to jail for trying to be a vigilante. Just in case you didn’t know, Find My iPhone is an iPhone tracking service that Apple introduced not too long ago to for iOS devices. Basically if your iPhone was stolen, misplaced or left somewhere, you can use the service to locate it.

US youth baseball umpire Carl Ippolito misplaced his iPhone and decided to use Find My iPhone to locate it. Using his son’s iPhone, he tracked his own iPhone to a location nearby where his phone was missing and he saw a man, named Brent Johnson, speaking on an iPhone.

When confronted about the phone, Johnson denied that he had stolen the phone from Ippolito. Not believing him, Ippolito took Johnson down to the ground and started attacking him. While it wasn’t mentioned how the fight ended, Ippolito later found his phone in the snack shack where he had been umpiring a youth baseball game earlier.

The police later arrested Ippolito on charges of simple assault and disorderly conduct. I wonder how Ippolito feels about the whole thing right now. If only he had locked his iPhone or made it ring remotely before trying to claim it from another man, it would have saved him from getting arrested. I guess we can all learn a lesson from this guy. Have any of you used Find My iPhone to successfully locate your iPhone before?

George Wong
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: Apple Inc, iOS, iPhone