If you lost your cell phone, don't go bothering Wayne Dobson. See, for the past two years, the 59-year-old retiree has been confronted by people who showed up at his doorstep at all hours of the night, claiming that he's got their lost phones:
What has become a powerful tool for police hunting down bad guys and people who lose their phones or who call 911 has backfired on Dobson. An unexplained glitch with at least one cellphone company is directing people with missing phones to his North Las Vegas home.
And the glitch is also affecting police, who have twice been wrongly directed to his house on domestic violence calls. That has forced Dobson to post a sign on the front of his house telling people he doesn't have their phone.
The problem seems to be the way Sprint translates GPS info of these lost phones to Dobson's home address. Lawrence Mower of the Las Vegas Review-Journal explains: Link (Photo: John Locher/Las Vegas Review-Journal)