A woman who got locked out of her Apple account minutes after her iPhone was stolen and had $10,000 taken from her bank account says Apple was 'not helpful at all'
Nazenin Elçi
- A woman said that soon after her iPhone was stolen, she was locked out of her Apple account.
- Reyhan Ayas said Apple was "not helpful at all" after $10,000 was taken from her bank account.
- She told Insider: "Once someone gets into that security environment, it turns against you."
Reyhan Ayas was leaving a Manhattan bar in November when a man snatched her phone and ran off. She said Apple was unhelpful when she tried to regain access to her Apple account.
Ayas, who's originally from Istanbul, is a senior economist at Revelio Labs, a workforce-intelligence company.
She initially spoke to The Wall Street Journal as part of an investigation into how iPhone thieves lock people out of their Apple accounts by using their passcodes to access the phone before changing the device's password and stealing funds from owners' bank accounts.
In an interview with Insider, Ayas said she was standing outside the bar when a man stole her iPhone 13 Pro Max. She believes he had seen her enter her passcode at some point and had waited for the chance to steal her device.
The 31-year-old said she borrowed another iPhone to try to locate her own using the "Find My iPhone" function.
However, Ayas said she'd already been locked out of her Apple account by that time. "I didn't know what was going on," she told Insider.
She filed a police report the following day and showed notifications of a password-reset request and login details from after her device was stolen. Insider reviewed both the police report and the notifications.
Because she had lost access to her Apple account, she was unable to log on to her MacBook computer. She contacted Apple support, which advised her to get a new SIM card and a new iPhone. She did so, but was still unable to access her account.
Over the next 24 hours, $10,000 was taken from Ayas' bank account, according to a bank statement viewed by Insider. She was advised to open a new account and transfer all her funds to it.
While visiting an Apple Store in search of support, Ayas said she received an email from Credit Karma showing an application for an Apple credit card. Another email showed the application had been approved while she was on hold with Apple-card support.
The support team "was not helpful at all," Ayas said. She then called Goldman Sachs, which issues Apple's credit cards, and was able to get some help.
Ayas said she was very frustrated at Apple continually asking: "Have you tried 'Find My iPhone?'"
"Of course, I tried it like minute three, I tried it. Like, this is a joke to you. My entire life is a shamble, yet you're still asking if I tried it," she told Insider.
During her most recent conversation with an Apple representative, the representative told Ayas that there was no way to regain access to her iCloud account.
"Apple takes a lot of pride in being, like, a closed-security environment. But they rarely talk about if someone gets into that closed-security environment; it is also closed to the people who own the account," Ayas said. "It can absolutely turn against you."
Alex Argiro, who was an NYPD detective before retiring in 2022, told The Journal that there had been hundreds of similar crimes committed in New York in the past two years: "Once you get into the phone, it's like a treasure box."
There have been reports of similar crimes in Austin, Texas; Denver, Boston and London.
An Apple representative told The Journal that the company believed these crimes were rare because the thief would need both the device and the passcode, and that Apple has account-recovery policies to help prevent bad actors accessing users' accounts.
Apple didn't respond to a request for comment from Insider.