An iPhone thief sent his victim a handwritten list of his 1,000 contacts (Picture: ndnews)

A pickpocket surprised his victim when he posted him a handwritten note of the 1,000 contacts on his stolen iPhone.

Zou Bin received the 11-page letter after sending a series of threatening texts demanding his Apple handset to be returned.

He was allegedly robbed after sharing a taxi with a man in the central province of Hunan in China, the Xinhua state news agency reported.

‘I know you are the man who sat beside me. I can assure you that I will find you,’ he wrote in the text message.


‘Look through the contact numbers in my mobile and you will know what trade I am in.



‘Send me back the phone to the address below if you are sensible.’

Zou said he was ‘astonished’ when he received a package containing the note days later, although the thief did not return the stolen iPhone.

While the man may have suddenly found his moral compass, it is more likely he was worried about Zou’s thinly-veiled threat of violence.

‘It would take a while to write from one to one thousand, let alone names and a whole string of digits,’ he added.

‘I suppose [the thief’s] hand is swelling.’