MEXICAN COMMUTERS BUY FAKE PHONES TO GIVE TO MUGGERS

Armed robberies have gotten so common aboard buses in Mexico City that commuters have started buying fake cellphones, to hand over to thieves instead of their real smartphones. Bandits regularly attack the buses that ferry people from the poorer outlying suburbs to jobs in the city center. There were an average of 70 reported violent muggings every day in Mexico City in the first four months of 2019. To avoid constantly losing their phones, people are buying fakes. The dummy phones have a startup screen and bodies that look like originals, and inside there is a piece of metal to give the phone the heft of the real article. They cost 300 to 500 pesos apiece — the equivalent of $15 to $25. One vendor of dummy phones says he sells three or four dummy phones a week out of his stall in a downtown electronics marketplace.
* Guy was last week’s winner of “Mexico City Shark Tank”.
* Once the criminals get wise, these people are going to need fake fake cellphones.
* Hey – the bus bandits could sell their stolen phones for people to use as the phone they give to bus bandits! It’s The Circle of Life!
* This message from the Mexico Tourism Board.