The New York Post is reporting that a sting by the New York Police Department last week where numerous vendors were suspected of selling stolen iPhones. According to a report, undercover officers approached over 600 vendors in search of the stolen iPhones.

Undercover NYPD officers sold the electronics to merchants at more than 600 stores around the five boroughs this week — asking from $50 to $200 for iPhone 4s and iPad 2s — after clearly stating the popular gadgets were stolen, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

The sting — which nabbed clerks and workers at businesses such as supermarkets, barbershops, pawnshops and bodegas — began Tuesday and continued through yesterday.

“That’s our intention, to reduce the places where people who steal these things can go and sell them,” said NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. “If someone is offering you an iPad for way below market value, you have to realize that it’s most likely stolen.”

The iPhone is one of the most popular target for thieves in New York. In one New York precinct in a period of the last 4 months more than half of the robberies involved an iPhone.

The popularity of Apple products have skyrocketed and the retail demand for the devices are incredible.

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