A crew of crooks busted into a Best Buy electronics store at Gateway Plaza early Tuesday morning and made off with more than 150 iPad 2s — the last Apple product to be introduced by recently deceased Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Cops said the thieves jacked-up the roll down security gates to the store at 1 Gateway Drive at about 4 am, smashed through the front door and raided a back office where the iPads were kept.
The thieves then scrambled off into the night, where they remained at large, said investigators, who believe that store employees may have been helping the i-crooks because several security cameras around the Best Buy were not working when the break-in took place, police sources said.
Police sources say that investigators are checking other cameras in the shopping center to see if they can get an image of the suspects, who took an estimated $112,000 in electronics.
A day after the break-in, the shattered glass door to the Best Buy — which is just a short distance from where a Walmart hopes to build in the near future — had been replaced, removing any signs of the Oct. 11 raid.
Workers at the East New York Best Buy would not comment on the theft. Calls to the electronic giant’s corporate headquarters were not returned.
The iPad 2 is the world’s most popular hand-held tablet computer, on which users browse the internet, check e-mail, and read digital newspapers like “The Daily.”
Scores of Apple products like iPhones are stolen each week in Brooklyn — and one person in Sheepshead Bay was even gunned down over one — but only a handful of iPad thefts have happened, usually in Bay Ridge and Clinton Hill.
The first recorded iPad theft took place last May in Fort Greene Park — just a few short months after the original iPad was announced to much fanfare by the beloved Apple founder, who died last week of pancreatic cancer.
Anyone with information regarding Tuesday’s Best Buy beak-in is urged to call CrimeStoppers at (800) 577-8477. All calls will be kept confidential.
