YouTuber films mission to locate stolen phone
Item not recovered but information helped police operation
AYOUNG woman spent three days tracking her missing iPhone which ended up part of a police investigation which discovered ten stolen phones.
Ellie Marie Whitby, from Runcorn, was out in Liverpool city centre in April when she realised her new phone had been taken.
After searching on Find my iPhone the next day, she realised it had moved.
She said she followed the phone as it moved from London Road to another address and then back to London Road before she got Merseyside Police involved.
She said: “We called the police when it was at an exact address but they wouldn’t come out then because the app isn’t accurate enough and it could be anywhere in that area, but the next day it pinged again and was back on London Road.
“We went into a few of the shops selling phones and asked if they had an iPhone 12 in my colour and there was a shop selling one.”
Ellie, who filmed the surreal experience for her YouTube channel, said at that point they got the police involved who “seized the phone”, which unfortunately turned out not to be hers, leading her investigation to a sudden halt.
But her three-day journey was not wasted as a week later, she found out Merseyside Police had found ten stolen phones from a phone shop on London Road following a lengthy investigation.
She added: “My phone hasn’t pinged since April 24 so police said it’s likely it’s been taken apart but within this whole thing, ten stolen phones were found and are going to be traced back to their owners.
“I’d spent all my savings on this phone, it was brand new, for filming on my YouTube channel.
“I spent three days straight chasing it as I was determined to get it back so I was disheartened to find out I wouldn’t get it back.
“But then a week later I woke up to a message on the police website, but then none of them were mine.
“At that point I was happy because at least something good had come from it.
“A big thing I learnt was to always keep your phone safe.
“If you’ve got a brand new phone I’d suggest getting a second phone to call people when on a night out but make sure it’s very well secure.
“It’s sad that you’ve got to do that. “It was a pretty crazy experience, as first I was thinking there was a rational reason, someone found it and would give it back but as we got deeper in it got more dangerous and we had to get the police involved, it was pretty crazy.”
In her YouTube video she took her 99k subscribers on her three-day journey in search of this phone as she said it is like a “horror movie”.
Ellie previously shared YouTube footage of her sneaking into London Fashion Week wearing nothing but a bin bag and another time persuaded her mum to dress up as Bigfoot stalking the woodlands of West Kirby.
Merseyside Police confirmed they received a report that, on Saturday, April 23, a blue iPhone 12 mobile phone was stolen from a woman in Liverpool city centre.
A spokesperson added: “Enquiries have been carried out and anyone with any information is asked to contact police via DM @merpolCC or by calling 101 with reference 22000278783.”
Taking to social media on April 29, Liverpool Police Facebook Page wrote about how several mobile phones were found in a shop on London Road.
They wrote: “After several mobile phone thefts in Liverpool city centre recently, we teamed up with Trading Standards and the council’s Alcohol and Tobacco Unit to find out where they were being sold on.
“Thanks to the specialist knowledge of the teams, we decided to focus on two areas – London Road and the Ropewalks – and our good guess paid off with ten stolen phones being found for sale in various shops as well as £15,000 worth of fake Apple phone cases, and thousands of illegal vapes and cigarettes.
“We are looking forward to piecing together the next piece of the puzzle tracing their rightful owners and giving them back to them.
“Our city centre local policing team have already made arrests in relation to these thefts and robberies and will keep patrolling the city to deter other offences and develop intelligence on who is carrying out these crimes and where they are selling these items.”