Traveller Tracks Stolen Suitcase With AirTag, Finds Thief Wearing His Clothes Near LAX

People who have bought Apple’s AirTags – small, coin-sized devices that contain a powerful tracking chip – have found all sorts of uses of them. They can be used for finding lost wallets, be placed in a car’s glovebox, even hooked onto a pet’s collar.

Regular traveller Daniel Scott popped one of the £30 devices in his suitcase before flying home to Los Angeles after a trip to Salt Lake City in August – and ended up getting an extraordinary surprise.

When he disembarked at LAX, all he wanted to do was to grab his suitcase and get home. But there was a mixup with the baggage handlers and the passengers from Daniel’s flight were initially directed to the wrong carousel.

He told NBC Los Angeles that he was waiting at baggage claim carousel 25, saying: “About 10 minutes pass by, and no-one’s seeing their bags. Then Delta [Airlines} come on the PA and say ‘I’m sorry, the luggage is actually coming out at baggage claim 23’.”

But when Daniel, and his fellow passengers, hustled over to the other baggage carousel, his bag was nowhere to be seen.

Daniel quickly pulled out his phone and checked the ‘Find My’ app to see where his suitcase had got to. He continued: ” I saw that it was not in the terminal, but it was moving towards the [taxi rank] and leaving the airport.

“So I just immediately started sprinting to the Uber lot. Once I got to the Uber lot I saw that it was continuing to move and it had reached across the street.”

Luckily, Daniel’s fairly fit and he managed to keep up with the moving track of his AirTag as it was carried to an abandoned building around half a mile from the airport.

The officers shone their torches into the abandoned building’s windows, and called on the thieves to give themselves up.

ADVERTISEMENT

It was then that Daniel got an incredible surprise. He recalled: “We saw some movement in the building and then when the guys came to the window – they lined them up in the window – I saw the guy with my clothes on. He had my shoes on. He had my shirt on and my pants on.”

Police detained several people at the scene, and once they had confirmed that the crime scene was clear, officers let Daniel into the building search for his suitcase.

He eventually found it, but it had been torn open and his clothes had been scattered over the filthy floor. He explained: “This is a pretty big building and my clothes are scattered through it in multiple different rooms.”

He says he got most of his stuff back, but stresses that if the same thing were to happen to anyone else, they should always wait for police to arrive rather than trying to tackle the thieves themselves.

The entire experience was “insane,” Daniel says, adding that he was “super-happy” to get his belongings back.