Global Citizen Festival victim’s stolen phone located in Brazil

One of the victims has found their phone, which was stolen after the Global Citizen Festival at FNB stadium on Monday morning. The unfortunate part, however, is that they located their phone all the way in Brazil, a revelation which has sparked speculation as to how it may have made its way there.

Anti-crime activist Yusuf Abramjee shared on Twitter: “As received from a victim: A cellphone stolen at 2am yesterday morning (Monday) at #GlobalCitizenFestival in Johannesburg has been located to Brazil. How is this possible?”

As received from a victim: A cellphone stolen at 2am yesterday morning (Mon) at #GlobalCitizenFestival in JHB has been located to Brazil. How is this possible? pic.twitter.com/mtNO6lkt0F

— Yusuf Abramjee (@Abramjee) December 4, 2018

Social media users went wild with explanations as to how this could have happened. The first suggestion from Philani Sikho was that the phone may be in Pretoria.

“After all, Sundowns call themselves the ‘Brazilians’,” he said.

@Luewellyn suggested the victim should check if there were any flights from OR Tambo Airport that landed in Rio on Monday.

“If not, it’s plausible [the] IP address is being masked by VPN software giving a false location.”

@Dexter suggested the victim get someone who can pull off an American accent, call the phone, pretend to be in Apple customer care, and thenask for passwords and Apple ID so they could retrieve all the information from the phone to help them locate it.

Though most said it was impossible the phone was really in Brazil, others said the international phone market was unfortunately big.

“For example, a cellphone-shop owner downtown Hillbrow has a monthly target of buying and shipping just 20 stolen Apple X cellphones, just do the maths, how much will he be making every month. Even he can sell them at R10,000 a piece at overseas markets,” said @JustTinyiko.

Whether the phone really is in Brazil or if the location was manipulated, most unfortunately agreed the chances of getting it back were slim.

Global Citizen Festival attendees were left in shock after the concert when they were the target of robbers. They took to social media on Monday to share horror stories of how people robbed them of their cellphones, while some women said they were almost raped and kidnapped.

South Africans criticised the SA Police Service and the Festival for failing to protect citizens when they were aware of the high crime rate in the country.

Read more: Fans slam chaos, violence and ‘mass mugging’ after Global Citizen

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