CLEVER: Trombonist Nadav Nirenberg yesterday tells how he used a hammer to nail an iPhone thief by posing as a girl. Got it? (Gabriella Bass)
A smartphone thief was caught, thanks to his own libido.
The horny crook was lured out on a bogus “date” this week by his victim, a guy who created a phony online dating profile — as a woman — to seduce the crook and get back his iPhone.
Nadav Nirenberg, 27, of Park Slope, Brooklyn, posed as a busty 24-year-old and sent romantic messages to the criminal, who had been using Nirenberg’s stolen iPhone to scour the OKCupid dating service for love.
Like a black widow, Nirenberg snared the lusty larcenist in his web.
“As soon as he responded, it was pretty crazy. It was extremely surreal,” Nirenberg said. “Afterwards, I was pretty giddy.”
Nirenberg — who plays trombone with the punk band Streetlight Manifesto — lost his iPhone 4 on New Year’s Eve during a livery-cab ride to a gig in Midtown.
The next morning, he learned via an OKCupid e-mail alert that someone had been using the phone to send messages to girls.
“I could log on and see everything he was sending. He was even using my photo,” Nirenberg said.
That’s when Nirenberg and a friend set their virtual trap.
He plucked a photo from Google Images and dubbed it “Jennifer in BK,” who is smiling into a Web cam with a bit of exposed cleavage. The two then set up a fake profile with the name “Jennifer Gonzalez.”
Nirenberg sent a message to the phone bandit later that day.
It quickly aroused the crook’s interest.
“U wanna meet?” the thief said in a message posted on the site.
“Yeah I kinda do,” Nirenberg wrote back, suggesting that they meet at “her” place that night.
“I used lots of winks and smiley faces so I would seem like a girl,” Nirenberg said.
The thief was less smooth, offering to bring over beer, which he misspelled “bear,” and calling her “hun.”
At one point, the thief asked the faux hottie for her phone number — but Nirenberg replied, “Ha ha, who talks on the phone anymore?”
The bandit knocked on his door at around 7 p.m. holding a bottle of wine. He was clean-shaven and smelled like cologne.
“He was ready for a date,” Nirenberg said.
But instead of a kiss, the musician tapped him on the shoulder from behind, flashed a hammer and demanded his phone back.
The crook, who was short and soft-spoken, nervously handed over the cellphone and bolted after Nirenberg handed him $20.
It all took less than 20 seconds.
“As he was walking away, I said, ‘You smell great, though,’ ” Nirenberg quipped.
He said he won’t file a police report or contact the city’s taxi commission because he didn’t want trouble; he just wanted his phone.
“It’s pretty rare to get your phone back,” he said.
“I feel giddy.”