Man Sets Online Dating Honey Trap to Recover iPhone

Man Sets Online Dating Honey Trap to Recover iPhone (ABC News)

A New York musician posed as a saucy femme fatale in order to come face-to-face with the man who took his iPhone.

Nadal Nirenberg left his iPhone 4 in a cab on New Year's Eve. The next morning, around 6 a.m., he noticed someone was using his online dating profile, which was linked to his phone, to troll for dates.

The Brooklynite decided to lure the person with his phone into a honey trap. He set up a phony female profile on OK Cupid, complete with a cleavage-bearing photo plucked from the Internet, and began communicating.

"My best version of talking as a girl as a flirty girl, I should say, is adding winky face emoticons," Nirenberg said.

The mark took the bait, writing: "U wanna meet?"

When Nirenberg said he did, the target, thinking he was communicating with a buxom beauty, asked, "Will you kiss me?"

Nirenberg coyly responded, "Well … I don't have a boyfriend."

They made a plan to meet up at Nirenberg's Brooklyn apartment for a date.

The man with Nirenberg's iPhone showed up in a nice jacket, smelling of cologne, and had a bottle of wine, Nirenberg said.

"I followed him up the stairs and he turns around and, basically, I confront him right here," Nirenberg said. "I put the $20 in his hand to defuse the situation as fast as possible, but I had a hammer in my hand just in case."

The man handed over the iPhone, took the money and ran, but not before Nirenberg got the last word.

"As he was walking away, I was surprised, I said, 'You smell great though,'" Nirenberg said.

It was a happy ending for the musician, who said 10 minutes after he got his phone back, he received a text for a last-minute gig.