Beware the fate of the oblivious laptop jockey, folks: a local freelance iOS developer had her MacBook Air and iPhone lifted from Joy's Place Cafe at Post and Taylor Streets in the Tenderloin on Friday by an unassuming fellow coffee shop patron who worked an hour-long con. Luckily for whatever app our victim was diligently working on, the story has a happy ending.

We're using "con" here in the most basic sense of the word, as the suspect suspect can be seen on security camera footage going about some fairly standard coffee shop business: First she scopes out the layout, orders a beverage and even pulls the classic, "will you watch my stuff?" move when she goes to the bathroom.

In an unguarded moment, theft victim Ahryun, who described the whole thing in detail on her blog, left her computer and iPhone unattended, only to return to her perch at the bar to find them missing. The whole thing has been condensed down to two and a half minutes of YouTube footage. The theft goes down around the 2:20 mark, while the rest of the coffee shop patrons barely bat an eye:

As of Monday afternoon, the video had over 170,000 views on YouTube and even more Reddit comments. By Monday afternoon, however, another local internet person claimed to have found the woman lurking around the Financial District, where she followed her into a Starbucks and called the cops:


We've got an order at the bar for one cup of Internet justice.

[h/t: SF Citizen, SF Weekly]