14 DAY TRIAL // On New Year’s Eve, Nadav Nirenberg, 27, of Park Slope, Brooklyn, took a cab ride to a gig in Midtown where he was going to play trombone for his punk band Streetlight Manifesto. On his way there, he dropped his iPhone.
It wasn’t until later when the OKCupid dating service sent him strange notifications that he realized that the new owner of his iPhone 4 was using the device to get a date.
So Nirenberg did something crazy (but smart) − he answered back using the picture of a busty 24-year-old female telling the thief “she” was interested.
“As soon as he responded, it was pretty crazy. It was extremely surreal,” according to Nirenberg. “Afterwards, I was pretty giddy.”
“I could log on and see everything he was sending. He was even using my photo,” Nirenberg tells the New York Post.
“U wanna meet?” the thief said in a message on the OKCupid site. “Yeah I kinda do,” Nirenberg replied, telling the thief he’d fancy an intimate first date at “her” place.
“I used lots of winks and smiley faces so I would seem like a girl,” Nirenberg said.
Smitten, the thief offered to bring over beer, which he misspelled “bear,” and called his blind date “hun.”
The thief eventually arrived at Nirenberg’s door with a bottle of wine in his hand wearing cologne. “He was ready for a date,” Nirenberg said.
As he rang the door, Nirenberg tapped him on the shoulder from behind. Holding a hammer in his hand, the musician immediately demanded his phone back. The thief, short and soft-spoken, handed over the stolen goods.
The “date” was over in less than 20 seconds, according to Nirenberg who actually paid the thief $20 for his trouble.
“As he was walking away, I said, ‘You smell great, though,’” Nirenberg said.