AirTags reveal officials in Mexico stole items donated for earthquake relief in Turkey

Earlier this year, Reuters published an excellent report exposing the false recycling practices of Dow Inc. and the Singapore government using Apple’s AirTag item tracker. In a similar vein, journalist Pamela Cerdeira has now shared a new video in which she used AirTags to track donations made in Mexico that were supposed to be sent to Turkey in response to the devastating earthquakes that hit the country earlier this year.

The donations were collected by the Mexico government, but it turns out those donations never made it to Turkey. In fact, they never made it out of Mexico City.

In a video published on YouTube, Cerdeira explains that she donated two things (a bag of rice and a package of toilet paper) to donation centers located in Mexico City that were set up to collect goods for Turkey. When she made the donations, however, she was skeptical that they would ultimately end up in Turkey, so she placed an AirTag inside both of them.

As it became clear via Find My that the donated items weren’t actually going to make their way to Turkey as promised, Cerdeira ventured out into Mexico City to track them down. According to the Find My app, the two donations had been separated, but neither of them was delivered to Turkey as promised.

Using the Find My app, Cerdeira discovered that both donations had ended up at separate markets where they were being resold by vendors. She went to the location shown by the Find My app for the bag of rice, but they wouldn’t let her in the building. She then visited the market where the package of toilet paper was located and used Precision Finding to locate it and confirm that it was being resold.

Whether or not this is a widespread outcome for donations made in Mexico remains to be seen. Government officials, however, promised to investigate Cerdeira’s findings.

This is yet another instance showing just how versatile AirTags can be. Along with stories like this one, we’ve seen AirTags be used for tracking stolen cars, stolen money, and of course, everyday items like keys.