Police are hoping to take a bold thief off the streets and it's all thanks to an app on a woman’s stolen phone.
Elizabeth Dittmann tells 41 Action News she became a victim of theft on June 5. That's when someone targeted her in the Claycomo Plaza parking lot as she fixed her minivan.
"Somebody reached through the open window of my passenger door and grabbed my cell phone off of my passenger seat," Dittmann said.
For weeks, she considered her phone lost and even got a replacement, but then something odd happened on Monday.
“I started receiving weird messages from my friends saying someone that is not you is on your Snapchat,'" Dittmann said. “At that point, I checked my email and saw that I had an email from an app on my previous device called 'Cleanmaster.’”
The popular Android app sent Dittmann a so-called "intrusion alert."
"You have a locked password on your phone. If that password is entered incorrectly it actually takes a picture with the front facing camera and sends that picture to your email," Dittmann said.
With photos of the possible suspect in hand, she turned to Facebook. Her post on the site's "Stolen KC" group generated dozens of comments and it was shared hundreds of times.
On Tuesday, Dittmann went to the Claycomo Police Department. Officers pinged the stolen phone's location.
They are now working to track down the alleged thief.
"This woman needs to stop. She needs to be stopped and she needs to punished for what she's done," Dittmann said.
