Image copyright Adobe Stock Photo Image caption A group of people broke into the store, stealing cash
Thieves who smashed the window of a Californian Apple store in broad daylight have stolen cash, but not expensive products.
The thieves broke in to the store’s ground floor in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, before making off with what appear to be smaller items.
It is the latest in a string of break-ins at Apple’s stores in the United States.
The thieves smashed the glass of the store at around 12:00pm and may have escaped with items from the glass counter on the ground floor.
Small items, presumably belonging to a retail worker, were left behind.
Angry CCTV footage of the incident showed the thieves using hammers to break the glass of the front doors. The security system also failed.
Sometime between 12:00pm and 15:15, several people entered the shop and left with two flatscreen televisions, an iPhone battery, a computer keyboard and change, as well as a personalised birthday cake.
A £140,000 ($200,000) golden iPhone was not recovered after the break-in.
According to Loyola Marymount University economics professor Neil Pinkston, the silver iPhone 5S is not considered “crude” enough to be sold for an appreciable profit, whereas a gold model could fetch around $40,000.
But earlier this week, thieves were captured on CCTV stealing gold iPhones from an Apple store in New York City.
Video courtesy of IT Vision Surveillance
Overall, electronics stores are a lucrative business in the US.
With around 30% of the world’s population living in urban areas, robbers seeking to make a quick buck have become ever more prolific.
Despite the high turnover of goods, there has been a rapid rise in the value of the stolen goods.
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Once stolen, it is almost impossible to trace as Apple does not possess databases for stolen phones or their serial numbers.
Instead, companies use unique security code or Fingerprint IDs.
After the Apple store incident, employees in California tried to alert the company about the incident, but it was too late.
“They were too late to change the location of the alarm to a zone, but by the time we got there [following the break-in], the robbers had already fled,” said Sherry Vander Noordaa, a store spokeswoman.
“What I can tell you is that we’re all praying for the safety of the entire team, and they’re all safe.”
This comes after the company was forced to close its store in Tysons Corner, Virginia, in the first quarter of 2019 after masked robbers smashed the store’s windows with a truck in January.