Man makes shocking discovery after flying from London to China tracking his stolen iPhone
Published on Jan 26, 2026 at 9:17 PM (UTC+4)
by Daisy Edwards
Last updated on Jan 26, 2026 at 9:17 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Emma Matthews
A man has made a shocking discovery after he traveled from London to China, tracking his stolen iPhone.
John Owen Jones, an actor from the UK, expected a regular UK phone theft to end the usual way: with an insurance claim and a new iPhone.
Instead, his iPhone kept pinging on location tracking, and the signal did not stay in the city for long.
The trail eventually pointed thousands of miles away in Shenzhen, China, turning a frustrating loss into a full-blown missing persons case.
EXPLORE SBX CARS – Supercar auctions starting soon powered by Supercar Blondie
Flying from London to China to track his stolen iPhone
For this British actor, it began with a simple moment of realization when he couldn’t find his phone – his beloved gadget was stolen, and London had already moved on.
But once he opened tracking, he realized that he was still able to monitor it, and the map gave him something most theft victims never get: a clear route.
At first, the iPhone’s location shifted around London in quick bursts, suggesting it was being handed around different people.
Then the location pings started stretching outward, and the device appeared to travel across borders, hopping between countries
As the stolen iPhone continued its journey, the trail led to Shenzhen, China.
For Jones, that was the point where the story stopped being just about replacing a phone and started feeling like a real-time look at how stolen electronics are moved quickly across the world.
He decided to follow it, boarding a flight from London to China with the tracking data as his guide.
Click the star icon next to supercarblondie.com in Google Search to stay ahead of the curve on the latest and greatest supercars, hypercars, and ground-breaking technology
What he saw there shocked him
Arriving in China did not mean an easy win, even with a precise location.
Getting a stolen phone back is rarely straightforward, especially when it has crossed continents, but, shockingly, he managed to locate it being sold in a shop.
The shocking part was not only that the iPhone had traveled so far, but the fact that the device had likely passed through multiple people, moving fast through channels built to spirit stolen goods away.
Shenzhen’s reputation as a global electronics hub made the final location marker feel less like a coincidence and more like the end point of an established journey that many types of stolen tech take.
Jones’ story is a perfect snapshot of modern theft because technology can show you exactly where your property ends up, sometimes in astonishing detail
But knowing the destination and actually reclaiming it are two very different things, and very rarely do these scenarios end in a Taken-style multi-continent pursuit, because that’s just showbiz, baby.
DISCOVER SBX CARS: The global premium car auction platform powered by Supercar Blondie
As a Content Writer since January 2025, Daisy’s focus is on writing stories on topics spanning the entirety of the website. As well as writing about EVs, the history of cars, tech, and celebrities, Daisy is always the first to pitch the seed of an idea to the audience editor team, who collab with her to transform it into a fully informative and engaging story.
