Participant in prolific Minneapolis smartphone theft ring sentenced to nearly eight years

A 25-year-old St. Paul man is going to prison for being among several people who at times used violence to steal more than 100 smartphones in downtown Minneapolis and then drain money from their victims' financial apps.

Aaron T. Johnson, 25, was sentenced Tuesday in Hennepin County District Court to a nearly eight-year term after pleading guilty to felony racketeering for stealing and reselling phones and finding people on social media willing to launder stolen money.

With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Johnson is expected to serve the first 4¾ years in prison and the balance on supervised release.

"People have to feel and be safe in our county," read a statement from County Attorney Mary Moriarty. "This sophisticated operation targeted unsuspecting victims enjoying a night out and contributed to instilling a culture of fear that threatens the vibrancy of our community."

Johnson was among 12 people charged in September with being in a roving network of sometimes violent robbers from June 2021 through May 2022 that stole phones from dozens of people near bars in downtown Minneapolis and Dinkytown for nearly a year, siphoning their transaction apps of money totaling more than $275,000 and routinely selling the phones to a man who shipped them to buyers overseas.

Along with having a role in several phone thefts, Johnson told police at the time of his arrest that he acted as a middleman, buying phones from people on Hennepin Avenue and telling them he doesn't want to know where they came from, according to the criminal complaint.

He said he would refurbish the phones, put them in new boxes he ordered and sell them for a profit to "foreigners," the charges continued.

The most prominent of the defendants is 32-year-old Zhongshuang Su, aka Brandon Su, of Minneapolis. He's accused of being the man who others in the scheme called the "iPhone Man," who bought the stolen phones and sent them to buyers overseas.

In total, prosecutors believe Su made 40 shipments of 1,135 phones to addresses in Hong Kong. Prosecutors put the value of those phones at more than $800,000.

The defendants who worked the streets often targeted intoxicated people as they left bars at closing time as far back as June 2021, the charges read. One defendant told police that a group of roughly 15 people from St. Paul has been coming to the downtown Minneapolis bar district for the past few years to steal phones from people, according to the charges.

In some instances, the defendants took phones by means including intimidation, "trickery and violence" that left people with serious injuries, the charging document read. At other times, the defendants approached people in a friendly manner and asked them for their phone on the pretext of adding themselves to a social media platform.

The defendants made sure the victims unlocked their phones before handing them to accomplices who would transfer money from the victims' accounts to the thieves' accounts using mobile payment services such as Venmo, Zelle and Coinbase, the charges continued.