Cell phone thefts commonplace, some even fatal

Santo Domingo.- Cell phones thefts are among the most common crimes which occur across the country, especially the Santo Domingo and Santiago metropolitan areas.

As many as 60 complaints of robberies are received daily just at Police headquarters alone.

Jorge Antonio Bidó, head of the Dept. responsible for mobile phone theft, said 958 complaints of that type were registered in January and 1, 020 in February.

And despite Dominican Telecomm Institute (Indotel) resolution 137-09 which created the Denied Series System to prevent activation of cell phones that have been reported lost or stolen, it has failed to prevent thefts, some even with fatal victims.

One notable victim of cell-phone theft was 20 year-old university student Vanessa Ramirez in Santiago, which led to the creation of the Vanessa Foundation, to fight that crime.