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The fart spray was a great addition as it seemed to be what caused the thieves to toss it out, allowing for recovery.
This is fantastic! It would be great if he mass produced these, possibly without the 4 presumably expensive phones.
What makes you think they were expensive phones?
Xiaomi A6 can often be found new around me for less than $100 each, they have good battery, good camera and good LTE modems. And there are cheaper options with inferior (but possibly sufficient) hardware. 2nd hand previous generation Xiaomi or Meizu are often $20-$40 when you can find them.

Isn’t as easy to find them in the US, but aliexpress and eBay are your friends.

Also note that the guy spent tens of hours of a highly competent engineer on this project. Even if he had used iPhone XSs, that wouldn’t have been the expensive part of his project...

It's frustrating how easy it was to find criminals.

He should buy actual postage and put a credit card inside. All of a sudden, the police should be interested in felony theft / felony mail fraud.

Considering how much card fraud (and other stuff like money laundering, etc) happens all the time on the Internet and nothing gets done, do you really think someone is going to care?
Should've used pepper spray and glass wool.
This is good but I wish he used something that inflicts actual monetary damage, like paint or something. Glitter is fun and all but is relatively easy to clean up. Paint is usually impossible to take off from fabric and would cost quite a bit if it were to explode in these assholes' cars for example. Would teach them a good lesson.
I think you'd be legally liable if they get hurt or, worse, if they lose control of their car and hurt or kill some innocent driver / bystander. Even spraying glitter is quite bold. Imagine if they swerve and kill someone, that'd be a tragedy and a legal mess.

I guess the main problem is that police can't / won't respond to petty theft, so common people are pretty defenseless against these assholes.

> if they lose control of their car and hurt or kill some innocent driver / bystander

Wouldn't this be the responsibility of the thief/driver for fiddling with the package while driving in the first place? Otherwise you may as well sue any manufacturer because you happened to have an accident while interacting with any item while driving.

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that if you booby trap something and your trap indirectly causes the harming or death of someone, you could be co-responsible :(

Not sure if you can bring the video to the police and try to get them arrested. It's not cool that these people act with impunity.

How could you possibly be considered responsible for the impact something of yours has after it's been stolen?

That's like arguing that I killed myself because the person who snuck in my house used the kitchen knife I accidentally left on the counter to murder me.

How could you possibly be considered responsible for the impact something of yours has after it's been stolen?

Because that impact was your explicit intention when you designed and set up the device.

Laws are sometimes stupid.

However this assumes they will be able to trace back the device to you. If you do it properly (I guess start with not leaving 3 phones with active SIM cards inside) they won’t be able to and you can enjoy your sweet revenge.

That said, they should have used Thioacetone. Good way to ruind their car or even their house forever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thioacetone
You might be what some might call an evil genius.