14 DAY TRIAL // A Philadelphia man suspected of armed robbery turned himself in after his picture was circulated on TV. When he used a stolen phone to take a photo of himself, it was automatically sent back to the device's rightful owner.
On October 7, a college student walking home from the Fern Rock Transportation Center was stopped by an unknown man, who pressed what she believed to be a gun at the back of her neck. The assailant told her to put her purse down and she complied. He then grabbed it and ran off.
The woman reported the robbery to the Police, but, given the circumstances of the attack, the authorities had very few leads. That is until the victim logged in to her remote photo-storage account only to find a picture of a black man with a big handgun held to his head.
She realized that her aggressor must have taken a photo of himself with her phone, which was in the purse he stole. She contacted the authorities, who in turn gave the picture to news outlets.
Seeing his picture on multiple TV stations, 18-year-old Kadeem Cook, who lives in the Olney neighborhood of Philadelphia, realized that it was only a matter of time until the Police would show up at his doorstep. According to local media, he turned himself in at around 11:30 p.m. on Thursday.
At the beginning of last month, we reported the similar case of a Pittsburgh man, who, after being robbed, tapped into the GPS function of his stolen iPhone and tracked the movements of his aggressors. He also tracked the transactions they made with his credit card allowing the Police to catch up with them in a parking lot.
Other robbers or perpetrators have been identified after bragging about it on social-networking websites or making mistakes similar to this one. In July, a spy-wannabe security guard was arrested on hacking charges after he posted a series of incriminating videos on YouTube. The clips depicted him installing malware on computers at the clinic he worked for.
