A journalist writes that his new MacBook Air, worth around €950, was stolen directly from his apartment at the beginning of 2024. He alerted the police about the theft, but the MacBook remained lost. But in December 2024 he received an email that gave him hope before bitterly disappointing him.
That was the situation: A journalist from JeuxVideo writes on December 26th that his apartment was broken into at the beginning of 2024 and the thieves stole his newly purchased MacBook Air M3. That costs around €950, so it’s a big loss.
He fought with the police, the insurance company and Apple, trying everything to get the part back, but in the end he bit the bullet, wrote off the MacBook and got a new one.
But in December 2024, he received an email that gave him hope. An “Anna from the UK” contacted him and said she had bought a used MacBook but realized it was apparently stolen. She was shown this number, which she now uses to call. Now she wants to give him the MacBook back. The police did not accept the return, but instead referred them to the nearest Apple Store. She was on her way there to send him back the MacBook.
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Journalist is suspicious, but the email seems legitimate
That’s how it went on: The journalist was suspicious because a month earlier someone had tried to frame him for his MacBook. At the time, the message was immediately recognizable as a scam. Anna’s email, however, seemed credible.
Anna tried to call him several times, but every time he tried to answer the call, it was not possible. Ultimately, she wrote to him that she had now arrived at the Apple Store and sent him a photo of the store as proof.
But that made the journalists suspicious. Because he didn’t even ask for a photo.
It seemed strange to him that Anna was so concerned with appearing “real.” So, in parallel with the conversation with Anna himself, he contacted Apple UK to find out whether what Anna said was true:
All of her statements seemed credible and, most importantly, she didn’t ask me any questions at all. [..] She said she will pass along my phone number so that Apple Care Service can contact me to return the MacBook.
The email turns out to be a scam and tries to phish him with a link
That was the catch: When the journalist contacts Apple, he finds out that they can’t find the Apple Store that Anna photographed and where she supposedly is now. She said she was in Manchester, but the only store there looked nothing like the one in the photo.
Now the journalist received an email saying his “MacBook Air M3” had been found. If he is the owner, he should answer “YES”.
Before he could even respond to the email, a second message came: To confirm that he was the owner of the iPhone, he should provide his full address after confirming his identity via a link.
The journalist says: the moment he was suddenly asked for an iPhone and no longer a MacBook, he realized that this email from Anna was just another attempt to scam him, apparently to get his password to come.
Journalist says: Scams have become more sophisticated
That’s what the journalist says: The journalist now believes that the late contact was only made so that they could get into his MacBook by trying to steal his Apple ID.
The thieves apparently have his MacBook, but can’t use it – so it remains worthless.
He says: Now that he has dealt with the scam again, he has to warn that the scammers’ methods have now become more sophisticated. When news like this comes along that gives you hope, you always have to approach it with a pessimistic and skeptical attitude. If something is too good to be true, then it is probably false: Fraudsters stole €5,000 from a person because he disabled an important setting on his phone
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