The Curious Case of the Sexy Selfie-Sending Phone Thieves

A Brooklyn woman claims her phone thieves left her a big, X-rated piece of evidence: home-made porn.

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Tim Robberts / Getty Images

Victoria Brodsky isn’t taking the theft of her Samsung Galaxy S3 last summer laying down. But her suspected phone thieves are doing plenty of lying down, naked-style: Brodsky claims the people who stole her phone have uploaded homemade pornography to her Dropbox account. And she intends to track them down.

Brodsky, who lives in Brooklyn, had her phone and wallet pick-pocketed at a street fair last August. Shortly thereafter, she started seeing sex selfies appear in her Dropbox account, which is linked to her phone. She has discovered 26 explicit photos and one sex video, all of the same couple. “It’s one thing to steal, but they’re celebrating,” she told the New York Daily News.

Brodsky has published the pictures in hopes she’ll catch the couple; she said the police categorized her phone as “lost” because she didn’t see anyone steal it, so she’s not relying on the NYPD’s assistance.

Considering these people were too dense to un-link the Dropbox once they started using the phone, they may not be digitally savvy enough to find out that they’re gaining Internet notoriety. And, of course, there’s no saying for certain that these people are Brodsky’s thieves: they may have simply purchased a stolen phone, perhaps without realizing. There is a booming market for re-selling stolen phones, and some people don’t realize they are purchasing stolen goods. So Brodksy’s accidental porn stars may not be thieves, just people with really poor judgment about the origins of their purchases.

This seems like a good place to point out that you should always make sure to check the settings on pre-owned products you’ve purchased, even if you’re certain they come from a legitimate source.