A tough-looking porch pirate was caught on surveillance video snatching thousands of dollars worth of belongings from a homeowner’s hands in a matter of seconds.
The daring theft reportedly occurred around 3pm on Tuesday in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where the victim, identified only as Henry, was retrieving a package containing six iPhones for his family. That’s what it means. ABC6.
As the homeowner bends over to retrieve the expensive package, the thief can be seen running to Henry’s door and jumping over an Amazon driver who is dropping off another delivery.
The Porch Pirate, wearing a black “Guess” shirt and a black Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap, quickly pulled the package away from Henry and sped off toward a light tan sedan with tinted windows that was waiting at the edge. . This property is shown in the video.
“He got into the back seat of the car and just jumped up into the street,” Henry told a local news outlet.
The homeowner was shaken by the shameless robbery.
“Now I have to be careful every time I open the door for a delivery,” he said.
He believes the thieves targeted the package, which contained several thousand dollars worth of cell phones. Henry said he saw the same sedan drive past his home just before the shocking theft.
“They see the FedEx, do a U-turn, go up the block and come right in front of the FedEx,” he said.
Even more bizarrely, shortly after the theft, Henry said he received a mysterious call from an unknown number asking him to return the six phones he had just stolen.
He explained to the person on the phone what had happened, but was immediately hung up.
“That’s a little weird, too,” Henry said. “Both of those things happened at the same time.”
In Pennsylvania, stealing packages from someone’s doorstep can now be considered a felony, thanks to a law signed into law by Gov. Josh Shapiro in December and made official in February.
Senate Bill 527 enacted harsher penalties for repeat offenders and those who stole valuable luggage.
The law makes porch piracy a third-degree felony if the value of the stolen items exceeds $2,000 or if the suspected thief has two or more prior convictions for mail theft.
Thieves convicted under this law can be sentenced to up to seven years in prison.
An estimated $6 billion worth of merchandise was stolen by porch pirates across the United States in 2023, according to statistics released by a home security intelligence company. safewise.
An estimated 113 million packages were stolen from doorsteps, a 5% increase from 2022.
More than half of the stolen packages were delivered by Amazon.
According to Safewise, 71% of stolen packages were worth less than $100.
