00:00He approached us in some casual conversation about how our night had been, what we do for a living and described himself as a footballer to raise our interest in his conversation.
00:09That's when my friend stepped away towards one of the corner shops and this stranger happened to take my phone off my possession and into his pocket.
00:20So there was a really specific pattern of offending where the group of offenders would go out and they would target people quite often on the way out of nightclubs or bars and through a combination of social engineering mechanisms, get them into a position where they were in possession of their phone and their phone was unlocked at the time.
00:43So once the potential victim was standing there, phone unlocked, one of the group would relieve them of their phone either by theft or robbery.
00:53It was only a couple of minutes between the initial snatch and this person trying to make a getaway and we followed, me and my friend, we followed him around the street and that's when we were supported by a couple of plainclothes police officers who later apprehended this person.
01:10My whole focus was to try and get my phone back and that was not found on the original thief so we decided to leave it at that and while I was obviously sad about the loss of my phone, it was also 4am in the morning I was tired and I was like okay we can deal with this tomorrow.
01:26As in Kushal's case, almost immediately afterwards sometimes, the financial movements would start from the phone so the data would start to be exploited and we saw that in both traditional banking apps and in cryptocurrency.
01:42The first hint was on my email itself where I'd seen notifications from Apple that my account had been accessed and my password had been changed and I knew that I hadn't done that so that's what raised the alarm bells in my mind that I should investigate further.
01:58What we would see is a period of time following the initial theft or robbery offence in which spending of the victim's assets was maximised.
02:09Just seeing that unfold in front of my eyes was difficult.
02:12This is hard earned savings that I had where I was being spent by strangers and I definitely felt very exposed and didn't know when it would stop because there were so many different avenues that they were using.
02:28I've been very impressed by the communication, the efforts firstly and then the communication by the police to me as a victim and the support that's been provided as well during that.
02:37Overall it's been a situation obviously where I was a victim to now where there's been justice served. I think it's been a very impressive outcome.
