SAO PAULO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Brazilian content creator Tabata Lenk had just been fired from her job in Sao Paulo, and was sitting in traffic, when two motorcycle assailants smashed her car window and snatched her brand new cellphone from the dashboard.
Footage of the late-August robbery, recorded on her dashcam, immediately became viral, Lenk said. The reaction points to how an urban nuisance has become one of the defining issues of this year's presidential election, even as phone thefts have been falling since 2023, there were still some 830,000 registered last year, according to the Brazilian Public Security Forum.
With Brazil's homicide rate falling by 40% over the last 10 years, to 15.4 per 100,000 people in 2025, according to the Forum, cellphone theft serves as a reminder of how far the country still has to go in bringing a sense of security to its over 210 million people.
Cellphone theft still ranks as Brazilians' No. 4 safety concern, a March survey showed, ahead of stray bullets and burglaries.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his right-wing challenger Flavio Bolsonaro, who will face off in a tight presidential run-off vote next Sunday, have both been jockeying to show they are tough on phone thieves.
Incumbent Lula signed a law earlier this year raising sentences for stolen electronics to up to 10 years in prison and launched a platform to register devices and report thefts, while Bolsonaro has proposed a minimum eight-year prison sentence.
"I only want to take aim at the thief and the store that buys and sells the (stolen) phone, I don't want to harm the innocent person who bought it out of necessity," Lula said in a televised address.
"The cellphone thief is going to jail," Bolsonaro said in a livestream after the first-round vote.
Lenk said she felt so unsafe after the robbery that she only returned to driving alone after getting her windows tinted.
"No one should be afraid to leave their house, walk in the street, or use their own cell phone," Lenk said. "So, I believe choosing politicians committed to public safety is essential."
BRAZILIANS LOVE THEIR PHONES
In one of the world's most online countries, where social media and e-payments dominate daily life, the cellphone has become an indispensable piece of kit.
Natasha Bachini Pereira, a researcher at the University of Sao Paulo's Center for the Study of Violence, said the prevalence of cellphone theft explained its political impact.
"It's far more common for someone to know of, or have been exposed to, a case of cellphone theft than a car theft, a homicide, or a kidnapping," Pereira said.
Phones are expensive in Brazil, and so is replacing them.
Research from Deutsche Bank found tariffs, taxes, and currency weakness mean Brazil has the world's second-most expensive iPhone 17 Pro — with a new one retailing at around $2,260, compared with $1,181 in the United States.
Even more modest phones represent a huge outlay for many Brazilians. An average cellphone retailed for around 2,310 reais ($456.83) in 2025, according to market data firm IDC, which is about two-thirds of Brazil's average monthly income.
Thieves are often just as interested in accessing online banking as the device itself.
As digital financial services have expanded rapidly in Brazil – driven by the central bank's Pix payment system – fraud involving stolen deviceshas exploded, more than quadrupling from 2024 to 2025, according to the Forum, a non-profit to promote public safety policies.
After criminals stole Lenk's phone, they took 2,000 reais from her bank account, using Pix.
"It's terrible to experience the violence of having your cell phone stolen, but realizing that someone invaded your privacy and managed to steal money from your account is downright agonizing," Lenk said.
RECOVERY EFFORTS
As Brazil's most populous state, Sao Paulo accounts for almost a third of all phone thefts nationwide, the Brazilian Public Security Forum says, with 268,184 nabbed last year, citing data from state authorities.
Police across Sao Paulo are working to prevent phone theft "in the strongest possible way and improve public safety," said Rodolfo Latif Sebba, a civil police chief who is coordinating efforts to find stolen phones.
Still, just a fraction of stolen devices are returned to their rightful owners. Between June 2025 and September 23 this year, police in Sao Paulo state recovered 38,028 cellphones and returned 11,445 devices to theft victims, the police said.
Student Natalia Eduarda Benvindo, 17, could not believe it when police found her stolen phone.
"I asked, 'are you joking?'" Benvindo said. "I couldn't even believe it at the time, wow! I was really happy."
(Reporting by Luciana Magalhaes, Andre Romani and Victoria Pacheco; Editing by Oliver Griffin and Gabriel Stargardter)
