Coachella Sleuths Track Down Pickpocket With More Than 100 Phones

If you’re a workaday pickpocket, there’s probably no better place in the world to be right now than the Empire Polo Club of Indio, Calif., where the Coachella festival is preparing for its second weekend of music and arts.

On Friday, police on the festival grounds arrested 36-year-old New Yorker (of course) Reinaldo De Jesus for allegedly lifting more than 100 phones out of the pockets of concertgoers, according to Palm Springs news station KMIR. Indio police Sgt. Dan Marshall told the station that multiple festival-goers suddenly felt about 4.5 ounces lighter and quickly activated their Find My Phone feature, which provides the GPS location of the device.

That led to one of the most entertaining music-festival parades in recent memory—a search party of revelers wandering the festival grounds in search of the little green dot with all their phones. According to police, the crowd eventually caught up with Henao, and he was “quickly detained by security until law enforcement officers could arrive.” Marshall reported that officers allegedly recovered a backpack with more than 100 phones in Henao’s possession.

A guy stole 100+ phones at Coachella pic.twitter.com/fVdCqWMh6H

— Karl Fletcher (@karlfletcher69) April 17, 2017

According to police, many of the phones remain in the festival’s lost-and-found area. If you were among the victims and you don’t know where the lost and found is, just turn on Find My Phone.

Indio police typically release arrest numbers at Coachella after the festival is complete. Last year, according to the Palm Springs paper The Desert Sun, 128 people were arrested during the first weekend of the festival, a 37 percent increase over 2015. The following weekend, 142 people were arrested. A majority of the arrests were related to drug possession.