A 52-year-old man in Almuñécar is under investigation by the Guardia Civil, suspected of stealing a mobile phone worth over 1,000 euros.
It was in September when a father was with his two daughters at the entrance to a self-service shop in town. The youngest of the children was in a pushchair and the father was keeping her entertained, letting her watch a video on his phone. The elder of the two daughters had gone inside to buy a bottle of water.
The father was pointing to the bottle of water that he wanted to the girl, who he could see through the door. When he looked back at his daughter in the pushchair, she no longer had the phone. Puzzled, he looked on the ground and under the pushchair, but it wasn’t there – somebody had stolen it.
He immediately went to the Guardia Civil post to report the theft, who then opened an investigation into the incident.
Following a clue obtained from the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) and after working with the telephone companies that provide services in Spain, they tracked the phone down, which was in the possession of the suspect.
Editorial note: mobile-phone networks use the IMEI number to identify valid devices, and can stop a stolen phone from accessing the network. For example, if a mobile phone is stolen, the owner can have their network provider use the IMEI number to blacklist the phone. This renders the phone useless on that network and sometimes other networks, even if the thief changes the phone’s subscriber identity module (SIM).
(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)