It's no secret that the iPhone is a hot commodity amongst thieves; so much so that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg went so far as to attribute the rise in New York City's 2012 crime rate to the increase in iPhone-related thefts.
Underlying the prevalence of iPhone thefts is an extremely lucrative resale market.
Police say stolen phones bought [in San Francisco] are often resold overseas -- in part to avoid a domestic blacklist being established by American wireless carriers -- eventually fetching as much as $1,000 at markets scattered from Hong Kong to Rio de Janeiro. The total value of lost or stolen phones in the U.S. is about $30 billion a year, according to the mobile-security firm Lookout.
