A 27-year-old musician found a unique way to retrieve his iPhone from a thief. Nadav Nirenberg, of Park Slope Brooklyn posed as a woman on OKCupid and made a date with the crook.
Shortly after his iPhone was stolen, Nirenberg began receiving e-mail notifications that someone was using his phone to look for dates on a popular online dating site. He realized he was able to log on to the OKCupid website and monitor the activities originating from his stolen phone. The crook wasn’t simply using Nirenberg’s telephone, he was also using his picture in the dating profile he created.
Nirenberg and a friend devised a plot to trick the thief and retrieve his stolen phone. Using an enticing image he found in Google Images, he created his own phony profile on OKCupid . As reported by The New York Post , the profile featured “Jennifer in BK.”
Nirenberg, posing as “Jennifer Gonzalez,” proceeded to send enticing messages to the phone thief. He claims he used a lot of “winks” and “smiley faces” so his feminine persona would be more convincing. Ironically the thief asked “Jennifer” for her phone number fairly early in the exchange.
Instead of exchanging numbers, Nirenberg arranged a “date” with the thief. In his blog nadavnirenberg.blogspot.com , he chronicles the “romantic” evening with the thief:
“Little did he know that on his way up the stairs I would pop out behind him, calmly give him $20 for my phone (it was in his hand) and tell him the cops were on the way (with a hammer in my hand). RETRIBUTION! The look of immediate shame on his face was priceless, homie was shook and must feel like an idiot. Dude was all dressed up, had a bottle of wine and stank of cologne. As he was walking away I was surprised I said ‘You smell great tho.’”
When Nadav Nirenberg is not tricking iPhone thieves with phony OKCupid profiles, he can probably be found playing his trombone or sousaphone. Nirenberg has toured all over the US and internationally with Streetlight Manifesto, a popular punk group based in New Jersey.