A student from Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate) exposed her thieving neighbor using a sensor in her teddy bear.

In July, the 27-year-old student Natalie Marx from Mainz lost her bunch of keys and her mailbox key. Since then, neither letters nor packages have arrived. Her thesis: someone is stealing her mail.

Natalie on “Bild am Sonntag”: “I was waiting for important documents from the university. My rental agreement didn’t arrive either. Who steals something like that?” Right from the start she had the suspicion that someone from the neighborhood must be behind it. The clever student then came up with a trap. “I ordered a teddy bear online and had the package delivered to me personally,” says the psychology student.

Then she prepared the bear with an “AirTag”, a tracking device the size of a euro coin, and put it in the mailbox in its original packaging. Lo and behold: after three days the bear was gone. Where did he land? Just one floor up!

Police found the package and another in a neighbor’s closet. She now has to answer for embezzlement, violation of the secrecy of letters and theft.