I’m sure you all have read those stories about the hunt for stolen iPhones. It warms your heart to know the culprits get served and those phones are not even yours.

Well now there is one happening right now closer to home and I’m on the investigation team. But with a BlackBerry, the hunt is a little bit more difficult without MobileMe’s Find My iPhone feature.

“K” lost her BlackBerry in a cab about a month ago. Thought she would never get it back, she got herself an iPhone. And then the ghost of her BlackBerry (theif) came back when a BBM message was sent to her friend–from her lost BB.

Then the hunt began as word got out to her twitter friends. You can follow my timeline for the updates on our hunt. What we have right now is the BlackBerry PIN and the profile photo of girl and her boyfriend. So this gives us a bit of a clue about how much she knows about the technology–practically none. The first thing you should not do on the BlackBerry you stole is put your photo on it. Second, talk to former owner’s friend on BBM.

So here’s what we know:

Her PIN: 216d5e21
Her first excuse: “โทษทีนะ ไม่ได้ขโมยมา คุณทำหายเอง” or “sorry it’s not stolen if you lost it.”
Her second excuse: She bought it from Apple Mobile, a phone shop in The Mall Ngamwongwan. Oh no not The Mall. She meant Phuket.
Her “name” on BBM: Beer emoticon “Snow” and then “Ball”.
And of course her photo:

So basically she knows it’s a lost phone, someone’s property. She knows the owner is looking for it. By refusing to give it back is as much of a crime as stealing it.

This is an ongoing story. Feel free to follow on Twitter. I will also be putting updates here.