Metro

‘Phone thief’ sets trap for self

A dimwitted thief gave cops the evidence to bust him by using a stolen phone to call his girlfriend, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

Daniel Guzman, 25, allegedly stole the phone in a mugging last month in Tudor City.

He used the phone to dial up his girlfriend, who’d accused him of battering her. Because of those allegations, cops knew her phone number — and matched it with calls made from the phone Guzman allegedly stole.

Detectives from the 17th Precinct used the information to lay a trap.

They contacted Guzman’s mom at her Harlem apartment, and told her they needed her son to come to the station house to review some photographs. When Guzman showed up, cops arrested him.

His mug shot matched a police sketch made public just after the March 18 knife-point robbery of a woman, 33, on stairs linking First Avenue and Tudor City. The woman was slightly hurt when the mugger slammed her into a wall and grabbed her purse.

She recovered quickly, enough to give chase with three good Samaritans — but they lost their quarry on 42nd Street.

Guzman remained at large until yesterday.