To the snatch-and-grab robbers who prowl the city’s

streets and subways, the iPhone is an attractive target:

ubiquitous, expensive and easily recognizable from across

the street

Additionally, the phones’ rightful owners are often

oblivious to their surroundings as they stare at their screens

or press them to their ears. But a fairly typical iPhone theft

on Monday in southern Queens involved an unusual

reversal of roles: it was the man that the police believe to

be the thief who was ambushed.

The victim of the iPhone theft, a 31-year-old woman, had apparently considered it likely that her

iPhone would someday be stolen. So she downloaded an application to her iPhone that instructs

the phone to take a picture and e-mail it to her if an incorrect password is used to unlock the

iPhone’s home screen, the police said.

That is precisely what happened, the police said, after a man bumped into her on Liberty Avenue

and took her iPhone 4 from her front right pocket. The photo, which the woman later received

via e-mail, shows a young man with closely cropped hair and an earring in his left ear in a bare

room, with what appears to be a skylight. The woman passed the photo on to the Police

Department, which distributed the photo widely to try to identify the man.

The app is available online under the name iGotYa, but is not for sale through iTunes.