One stolen iPad nets $35 million in drugs

So, you’re sitting on a nearly 800-pound stash of drugs and you’ve got nothing to do. Sounds like a great time to steal an iPad and fill all of those empty hours with a little Apple flavored fun, right? Apparently, that’s exactly what one group of criminals did and the police tracked them down using Apple’s much loved and lauded “Find My iPad” feature.

Meth amphetamine, about 780 pounds of the stuff, were discovered in a Palo Alto, California apartment by police tracking a stolen iPad. Quite naturally, the cops were using the Apple tablet’s built-in “Find My iPad” feature, which leverages the device’s integrated GPS and displays its location on a user’s iCloud account page.

That said, because the officers didn’t have a search warrant, they knocked on the suspects’ door and, for whatever reason, the rocket scientists in possession of the stolen iPad, and hundreds of pounds of drugs, opened the door.

“They probably thought if they didn’t, we’d suspect something,” said a police spokesman. “Or they thought, ‘I’ll let them in — they probably won’t find anything.’”

When questioned about the discovery and arrest, Palo Alto District Attorney Jeff Rosen said his jurisdiction might seize 100 pounds in an average year, making this bust the biggest ever.

“I told my dad about the bust,” said Rosen, “and he said, ‘They have $35 million, and they can’t go out and buy an iPad?’”

A device worth less than a thousand dollars brought down a meth operation worth tens of millions that required months if not years to plan and hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to run.

Details, people, details…

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