Did you know Burglars are leveraging Instagram location data to rob famous influencers

A gang of 4 members nicknamed the “acrobat thieves” are reported to have been arrested in Milan after being charged with allegedly monitoring the Instagram pages of the city’s Celebrities and Influencers and then using their publicly available data to reach their apartments, buildings, and homes for robbing. The report presented by BBC says that the gang was successful in knowing where the stars lived by examining their photos, and using tagged locations. The footage has also been leaked by the officials that identify robbers scaling apartment buildings.

While three of the suspects were arrested on Wednesday, one of the gang members was arrested back in January. One of the members is a 17-year old; expected to appear in Juvenile Court.

The first victory of success was celebrated by the gang on the 6th of June when it was fortunate in stealing the belongings from Leotta that were of an estimated worth of €150,000 (132,000 pounds). The belongings included Jewellery, designer handbags, and Rolex watches. With a gap of 6 months, the group appeared at the home of Eleonora Incardona in December- who is along with being an influencer also the former sister-in-law of Leotta. According to the reports- no change was observed in the method of the gang’s previous and this raid.

Their name well defines their ability and exceptional skills of climbing the outsides of buildings. According to the Italian Media, the gang looted nine bags, two belts, two earrings, fave scarves, two brooches, a necklace, a bracelet, along with a suitcase and a wallet that were worth the cash €1,000; tens of thousands of euros.

Moreover, the police after using the geolocation data detected that the group even examined the type of windows the victims had; by keeping a check on the photos of the celebrities- which helped the gang to plan its entry. A CCTV footage released by the police from December shows that one man was scaling an apartment building, while the other one was keeping a watch. Furthermore, Francesca Crupi – who is a Prosecutor believes that the other two accompanies were waiting inside the apartment.

The great news is that the law enforcement authorities have been successful in managing to retrieve most of the loot. However, it’s a reminder for all social media influencers to take lesson from this incident by carefully evaluating how, what and when they share their information on social network.