ORLANDO, Fla. — A woman who lost her Apple Watch while riding The Seas and Nemo and Friends at Epcot claimed someone used it to charge about $40,000 to her credit card last month, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
She said the watch was not returned to her promptly after she lost it on the ride, as promised by an employee. The day afterward, she said she began receiving fraudulent charges on an unlimited American Express credit card linked to the smartwatch.
The woman’s name is redacted from an incident report because she requested anonymity under a state law protecting crime victims, records show.
An OCSO spokesperson said detectives are still investigating, and the report contains all the information they currently have. Disney representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Apple Watches automatically lock when removed from the wearer’s wrist under their default settings. If this feature is disabled, watches require a passcode to use Apple Pay, according to Apple Support.
The Sheriff’s Office’s report does not detail what security measures were activated on the watch at the time.
Records show the victim was “fidgeting” with her Hermès Apple Watch when it came off around 11:30 a.m. on April 13. She said she saw the watch fall through a grate and land on a walkway below the attraction.
Her husband jumped out of the ride to get it, causing it to stop, the report showed. A Disney employee told the woman she could see the watch and that employees would retrieve it and return it to the family’s hotel.
The woman immediately went to Guest Services when she returned to the Contemporary Resort, but the watch was not there. She said it still had not been not turned in when she checked at about 9 p.m. that night.
Around 7:30 a.m. the next morning, the woman received a fraud alert on her American Express card. She canceled the cards attached to the watch and returned to Guest Services, where employees told her they still had not received the watch, according to the report.
Disney Security and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office were called to the hotel soon afterward.
Apple notes that users who lose their Apple Watch can track its location on their phones and mark the device as lost, which locks the watch with a passcode and blocks cards linked to the device from being used with Apple Pay.
Katie Rice of the Orlando Sentinel wrote this story.
©2022 Orlando Sentinel. Visit orlandosentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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