Burglars recently cut through a wall of a neighboring shop to steal $500,000 in Apple products from the Alderwood Mall Apple store in Washington.
The perpetrators stole hundred of iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches sometime after 7:00 p.m. local time on Sunday night, April 2. The store was closed at the time of the breaking and entering, and it was Monday morning before Apple employees learned of the heist.
The bad guys cut through a bathroom wall in an adjoining espresso machine retail store. The store owner said he had been in the mall for five years and hadn’t seen anything like this happen during that time.
“Our front door was locked. They pried our front door open,” Seattle Coffee Gear Regional Manager Eric Marks told Komo News.
“[It was a] 24 by 18 hole cut in the wall into what appears to be the back room of the Apple store,” he continued. “I’m surprised we were the conduit for them to get to the Apple store, I had no clue we were so close or adjacent to them.”
Lynnwood Police Department Communications Manager Maren McKay said the thieves stole approximately 436 iPhones and an unknown number of iPads and Apple Watches, for a total haul of about $500,000 worth of merchandise.
Lynnwood police say surveillance video shows what appears to be a well-organized operation. “From the masks that the folks were wearing, that there were no fingerprints left behind,” McKay added.
Seattle Coffee Gear says the store’s locks have been changed and that the “hole-in-the-wall gang” cost them an estimated $1,800 in damages.
