I live in Logan Square and this is the fourth time in the last week that a cell phone store in my neighborhood has been robbed.
One of them involved the cops and a shooting.
I don’t own a cell phone but I would never think to rob a cell phone store. They were a 2 T-Mobile store, US Cellular and a Verizon store.
Do they have a lot of money? Coincidence? I live in a poorer area and I suppose people could be paying their bills with cash as poorer people do.
I doubt they are after cash… I would think they are after phones which they could then sell on eBay or Craigslist, etc.
All the cell phone stores I have been to do not handle cash at all. Credit cards only.
I was afraid this was a “need answer fast” thread.
Seriously, the robberies are for the phones, like **AmunRa **said. They can easily sell them on the street. Look on Craigslist; I think half the phones on there are hot. They’re worth a lot more in the original box with the accessories.
How much money they have probably depends on the neighborhood: In a poorer neighborhood, there might be a lot of folks who pay their phone bill in person at the store.
Sometimes people rob dumb things, though. Recently somebody robbed a really super nice expensive restaurant around here - the kind of place nobody uses cash. I heard he got nine bucks.
I worked as an armed guard in an inner city T-Mobile store for two months. We weren’t there to stop the place from being robbed, we were there to protect the staff from morons and cut down on theft.
There were an unbelievable number of people who would drive their $500 car in and pay their monthly $600+ family phone bill. It just flat out amazed me how many people were paying the equivalent of rent on a studio or 1 bedroom apartment EVERY MONTH on phone service. Of course, every single one of those people would have to have the hottest, latest phone with all the trimmings and the best packages possible.
So the store dealt with a fair amount of cash. The cell phones themselves were in a locked back room, usually locked in a cage. You rob the place and you’re very unlikely to get access to the back room itself, let alone the cage.
But early in the month? Probably a fair amount of cash.
I never thought about the phones themselves, I guess that’s as good as cash.
But if the phones are kept locked in back like Chimera says, then it’s likely for the cash from bill-paying.