Despite this, the phone's destination made sense. Shenzhen is home to Huaqiangbei, a sprawling electronics market where stolen phones are dismantled for parts or reassembled into “new” devices.

Months later, it resurfaced nearly 8,000 miles away in Shenzhen, China, a well-known city hub for electronics manufacturing and repair. By this point, the device was locked and useless to whoever had ...