A brazen cell phone theft at knifepoint in downtown Vancouver has police warning anyone who owns a handheld device to be extra vigilant.
Three men were walking near the Vancouver Art Gallery on Hornby and Georgia streets Sunday night when they were approached by a man and a woman asking for cigarettes, according to Cody Faulkner, one of the victims.
“We just said no, sorry buddy and he pulled out a knife and the next thing we know, three cell phones not in our pockets,” he said.
Faulkner said they convinced a nearby person to call police, and the suspects were apprehended shortly after the incident.
A 24-year-old man and 25-year-old woman from Surrey are now in police custody and are expected to face robbery charges. The three stolen cell phones were recovered, police said.
It’s just the latest robbery involving electronic devices – the kind of crime police are hoping a new national blacklist for stolen phones will help deter.
Sgt. Randy Fincham said police are urging people to record their International Mobile Equipment Identifier (IMEI) number – a unique number to each phone found under the device’s battery.
“In the event that your phone’s stolen, you can report that to your service provider and they can add your phone to a blacklist,” he said. “This is a list that will prevent that phone from being activated on a network anywhere in Canada.”
The IMEI number can also be found by dialing *#06#.
“What we want thieves to know is that once these phones are on the blacklist, they’re useless,” Fincham said.
Those looking to buy a secondhand phone can also look up the IMEI number online to see if the phone has been stolen.
According to Vancouver police, there were 196 cell phone robberies reported in the city in 2013, and 215 the year before.
But more than 12,000 phones were reported stolen to providers in B.C. between January and September of last year, according to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association – indicating a large number of thefts go unreported.
