A massive NYPD sting nailed 141 merchants at bodegas, newsstands and barbershops for buying what they believed were stolen iPhones and iPads, cops said.
Undercover NYPD officers sold the electronics to merchants at more than 600 stores around the five boroughs this week — asking from $50 to $200 for iPhone 4s and iPad 2s — after clearly stating the popular gadgets were stolen, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
The sting — which nabbed clerks and workers at businesses such as supermarkets, barbershops, pawnshops and bodegas — began Tuesday and continued through yesterday.
“That’s our intention, to reduce the places where people who steal these things can go and sell them,” said NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. “If someone is offering you an iPad for way below market value, you have to realize that it’s most likely stolen.”
The slight uptick in grand larcenies this year has been driven by thefts of handheld electronics, Browne said.
This week’s sting follows undercover NYPD operations in the subway that targeted the electronics thieves who prey on straphangers.
Brooklyn saw the most arrests, with 42, while there were 41 in Manhattan, 31 in The Bronx, 21 in Queens and six on Staten Island.
The tactic of sending undercover officers to businesses known to buy stolen phones was already in use by precincts in Williamsburg and Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
“We talk to prisoners when we bring them in and ask them, ‘Hey, where are you selling these phones?’ ” said a police source in Fort Greene’s 88th Precinct.
Bodegas buy stolen smartphones for about $175, then turn around and sell the phone on eBay for about $300, the source said.
He added that in some months, more than half the robberies in the precinct involve iPhones.
Apple sells the iPhone 4 for $549 and the iPad 2 starts at $499.
A police source at the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg cautioned against displaying a smartphone outside.
“Walking around with a cellphone is like walking around with a $500 bill,” said the Williamsburg source. “Kids are stealing them and flipping them immediately.”
Smartphone thieves in Washington Heights often sell their loot in barbershops, said a police source from the 33th Precinct.