CHENNAI: A 25-year-old mobile phone dealer-cum-repair shop owner from Burma Bazaar, who allegedly bought cell phones from snatchers, was nabbed by police on Friday. Seventy mobile phones, including 50 iPhones, were seized from him, police said.
Police identified him as Abdul Rehman of Perambur. Police said that the arrested person allegedly got mobile phones from snatchers, reset the instruments and sold them.
Though he reset the phones, when a new sim card was inserted, the original iphone owner will receive a text message of the mobile number which is using his stolen instrument.
In one such incident, a man who lost the phone received a message saying that a new sim card had been inserted in his snatched iPhone. He showed the phone number to Mambalam police, who traced the phone number and found that it belonged to a person of Kodungaiyur. Police who questioned him found that their counterparts from at least five States had approached him recently, but he did not know the reason.
Police through their intelligence unit found that Abdul Rehman was good at repairing iPhones.
He was nabbed and during questioning, he is said to have told police that while resetting the mobile he used to insert a sim card that he bought using the Kodungaiyur man’s voter ID card.
That was the reason why the man at T Nagar got a message.