Queensland tradie used phone tracker to find his stolen wallet as thief was buying lottery tickets

A tradie used a digital GPS tracker to hunt down the alleged thief who stole his wallet before confronting him and wrestling him to the ground.

Queenslander Sam Fraser, 33, was hard at work on a construction site on Tuesday when his wallet was stolen.

Shortly after, he started getting notifications from his bank warning him that his card had been used to buy $30 worth of lottery tickets, Nine News reports.

Mr Fraser was then able to use a small GPS device attached to his wallet to track the alleged thief’s movements from his phone.

Queensland tradie Sam Fraser used a GPS device in his wallet to hunt down the man who allegedly stole it (pictured, the alleged thief at a newsagent)

CCTV footage taken at a newsagency shows the apparent thief buying lottery tickets before Mr Fraser confronted him.

‘I ran over and grabbed him. I ended up bear-hugging him from the back,’ Mr Fraser told 9News. ‘Then after about 5-10 minutes I got him to sit down on the floor’.

The 33-year-old was able to recover his wallet and later found his Medicare card and licence which were left in a ‘disabled bathroom in one of the bins’. 

It comes as Queensland continues to struggle with rising youth crime rates.

New data shows children were responsible for about 20 per cent of the state’s total charges in December and January, the Brisbane Times reported.

The Palaszczuk government recently passed new laws to criminalise children who breach their bail conditions in an attempt to lower crime rates.

The laws also allow for GPS trackers to be fitted to children as young as 15 and the court to declare youths as serious repeat offenders.