Suspect arrested in $1.9M iPad mini heist at JFK airport

Posted:
in iPad edited January 2014
Federal agents have arrested a man they believe is connected to the theft of $1.9 million worth of iPad minis from a cargo building at New York's JFK airport.

Renel Rene Richardson has been arrested in connection with the heist, in which thousands of iPads were stolen last week using an official airport forklift, according to the New York Post. Richardson was nabbed by the FBI after he allegedly made suspicious inquiries to coworkers about the shipment, as well as where he might be able to access a forklift.

The building from which the iPads were stolen was the site of the infamous Lufthansa heist, in which $5 million in cash and $875,000 worth of jewelry were stolen. It was the largest cash robbery to ever occur on U.S. soil.

That incident was featured in the 1990 film "GoodFellas," starring Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, which led to the name of the film being used in connection with the iPad mini heist. But after agents apprehended a suspect, the Post suggested he could instead star in "Dumbfellas."

Heist


Richardson worked at the Cargo Air Services building, according to a criminal complaint filed in Brooklyn, and he had two helpers. He allegedly acted as a lookout, authorities said, while two other unidentified accomplices loaded two pallets of iPad minis onto a truck.

Richardson reportedly accompanied Port Authority detectives in a search for the truck used in the heist. However, it's unknown whether any of the stolen iPads have been recovered.

Reports originally claimed that the 3,600 iPad minis solon from JFK were valued at $1.5 million, but now the total value is said to be around $1.9 million. The starting price for the 16-gigabyte, Wi-Fi-only iPad mini is $329, while the most expensive model is a 64-gigabyte version with cellular data for $659.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    Throw the iBooks at him!
  • Reply 2 of 14
    ForgetAbouIt!
  • Reply 3 of 14


    Apple Nixes AppleCare Sales in Italy


     


     

    7:42 PM EST, Nov. 13th, 2012


    · Bryan Chaffin · News


    AppleCare in ItalyApple has stopped selling AppleCare in its Apple Store locations in Italy, and will no longer distribute AppleCare to third party retailers. Reuters reported that Apple confirmed the decision, which comes in the wake of Italian regulators spending much of the year pointing out that AppleCare was providing a for-fee warranty that Italian law requires be included out of the box.


    Apple includes a one year limited warranty with its products, and offers customers AppleCare that can extend that warranty by one or two years, depending on the product. In Italy, however, companies are required to warranty their products for two years, and regulators said that Apple selling AppleCare for that second year violates Italian law.


    Apple was fined €900,000 (US$1,132,559 at the time) by Italy's Autoritá Garante della Concerrenza (AGDC) as part of this ongoing process in Italy. The company appealed that fine and lost, and stopped selling AppleCare in its brick and mortar stores on November 9th.


     


    In a related story, the Mafia denies any culpabiity in the JFK iPad Mini heist!


     

  • Reply 4 of 14


    The odds of getting away with any big-dollar electronics heist are absurdly low, but stealing high profile, high value items from an overseas shipment—ensuring the full involvement of the FBI—was outrageously stupid.

  • Reply 5 of 14
    adonissmuadonissmu Posts: 1,776member


    What were these people thinking? These people will never be able to work again. They might as well kill themselves. 

  • Reply 6 of 14
    apple ][apple ][ Posts: 9,233member


    This was no Goodfellas, it was Dumbfellas.


     


    The genius was making inquires about the iPad shipment and asking where to access a forklift? image He may as well been wearing a shirt that read thief on it.


     


    If stupid were a crime, this guy should be locked up just for that. Since being stupid is unfortunately not a crime, he should at least spend a few decades behind bars, as stealing nearly 2 million worth of goods is no small crime.


     


    Thieves love Apple products, they just can't get enough of them. Have you ever heard of anybody stealing 2 million worth of Android tablets? Even dumb as crap thieves like this JFK worker moron, aren't that dumb.

  • Reply 7 of 14
    Candidates for a future Darwin Award, maybe...?

    The deeper idiocy of this is that every one of those devices has a unique serial number and UDID. The moment they go up for sale (and ultimately are used to go online with), it won't be hard to track any one of the 4,000 or so units back through to the original source.

    The only way I could see them getting away with this is if that shipment ends up on a different boat as a black market shipment to somewhere like eastern europe, or even back to China, but getting away with something like that is pretty tough these days as well.

    They won't be getting anywhere near the dollar-value of that haul either. Who would be stupid enough to buy it from them here, if it weren't destined for some remote overseas smuggling operation?

    Somehow, I don't think this heist is quite that connected or sophisticated...
  • Reply 8 of 14
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Candidates for a future Darwin Award, maybe...?

    The fact that they were able to leave with a couple crates of iPad minis tells me they are far too intelligent for the Darwin awards.
  • Reply 9 of 14
    The folklift inquiry was epic. He should've also asked when the night watchman takes his union mandated break.
  • Reply 10 of 14
    The folklift inquiry was epic. He should've also asked when the night watchman takes his union mandated break.

    "Do you keep the forklift keys and in which hanger are the iPad minis stored?"
  • Reply 11 of 14


    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post

    "Do you keep the forklift keys and in which hanger are the iPad minis stored?"


     


    "If one were to abscond with, say, nearly two million dollars of iPad mini, what might be the best way to go about doing that?" 

  • Reply 12 of 14
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post




     

    The fact that they were able to leave with a couple crates of iPad minis tells me they are far too intelligent for the Darwin awards.


    When you have something expensive to ship, you usually hire an expert in that field, for example priceless art, antique autos, gold bars, etc. Apparently whoever they hired to ship those iPads was not specialized in that field to leave them unattended without 24/7 armed guards.

  • Reply 13 of 14
    Like cars you'd send the parts out from a chop-shop. With so many iPad Minis being sold the parts for repair should get a good chunk of change.
  • Reply 14 of 14

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ThinkKnot View Post



    Like cars you'd send the parts out from a chop-shop. With so many iPad Minis being sold the parts for repair should get a good chunk of change.


     


    Uh...


     


    Cars can be broken down into parts for resale a lot easier than iPads can.  The only way stripping iPads for parts could possibly be profitable was if you shipped the iPads back to China to be disassembled.  And even that is stretch. 

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