Mass. 9-year-old faces larceny charges after Amazon’s Alexa records his voice
GLOUCESTER, Mass.– A 9-year-old boy is facing charges of breaking and entering and larceny after a woman recognized his voice from an audio recording from Amazon’s voice activated virtual assistant, Alexa, on her phone.
According to officer Scott Duffany’s report, police responded to a house after a woman reported that someone had entered her apartment through a rear first-floor screen three times in the last week, and made off with an iPhone, phone charger, cash and other items from her apartment.
An Alexa Echo, and a package from Amazon was also taken off her porch after delivery.
Duffany and Sgt. Sean Conners then went to speak with the boy and his mother, who gave the officers permission to speak with her son. After first claiming he did not know what the officers were talking about, the boy then confessed to breaking into the woman’s home on three occasions and taking items that matched a list of missing items Duffany had compiled.
The boy then took the officers to places where he had hidden the stolen items — including to a fenced-in area behind the apartments, and, in one case, to a box back in the kitchen of the victim’s apartment. The boy told officers he “could not find” where he had stashed $46 in stolen cash, but Duffany said he was able to locate that exact amount of money inside a sneaker that was found in a closet.
Police returned the cash, headphones, the charger and the iPhone to the victim but held onto the Alexa and a smart phone projector that had been in the Amazon package for evidence, noting that both of those items had been ruined by being left outdoors.
The report does not include any statements from the child or the mother as to his reasons for the thefts. The child will be facing charges in juvenile court.
Lamont writes for the Gloucester, Massachusetts Times.