App helps track down stolen iPad

A STOLEN iPadwas traced to a house in Runcorn using a hightech app that allows its owner to track its location.

On Tuesday at Warrington Crown Court, 20-year-old Owen Preston was handed a suspended prison sentence for handling stolen goods in relation to the iPad Mini and for possession with intent to supply cannabis.

Preston told police he had bought the laptop off ‘some smackhead’.

Jo Maxwell, prosecuting, told the court that officers found the iPad in his bedroom at his family home on Fallowfield in Halton Brook on March 21 this year, three days after its theft from a car.

Its owner Matthew Sinnott used the Find My iPhone app to switch on the iPad camera to see who might be using the item but found the lens had been covered.

It also switched on a message that flashed on the screen and urged whoever had it to call a number so they could return the item to its owner. Preston told police that he had seen the message the night before his arrest and intended to call it.

While at the property, police also found a bottle of cannabis in liquid THC form known as ‘shatter’ and also cannabis bush plus mobile phones, snap bags, ‘tick list’ dealer lists and scales.

The court heard the quantity of the Class B drug was low, and worth about £50. Preston had said he smoked about 15 joints a day.

The defendant had no previous convictions.

Paul Abrahams, defending, asked the court to consider his client’s youth, his previous good character and willingness to work. He said Preston ‘will look back and be thankful that his journey into drug dealing has been stopped at the very earliest stages’. Recorder Anthony O’Donohoe, presiding, said Preston would have known that the iPad was stolen given the circumstances of how he obtained it. He handed Preston a two-month curfew from 10pm-6am and 180 hours of unpaid work. Preston was sentenced to two months in a young offenders institution for handling stolen goods, and eight months for dealing cannabis, with the terms suspended for 18 months. Sentencing him, Recorder O’Donohoe warned that having a criminal record could affect his employment opportunities. He said: “These matters have cost you your good record. I know you’re not work shy – you have harmed yourself in that way.”