Ceará's Meu Celular Program Recovers 18,493 Stolen Phones in Brazil

On October 16, 2026, Ceará's Civil Police said the state's "Meu Celular" ("My Phone") program had recovered 18,493 mobile devices since it was created, according to the Civil Police and the news outlet PoderNews. The figure was announced as the state government handed back a new batch of 1,568 recovered phones to their owners at a ceremony held at the Centro Integrado de Segurança Pública (Cisp), on Avenida Aguanambi in Fortaleza's Aeroporto district, starting at 8 a.m.

Governor Elmano de Freitas, Public Security Secretary Roberto Sá and Police Chief Márcio Gutiérrez attended the handover, according to the Civil Police's announcement. Ceará is a state in northeastern Brazil; the program is run by the state government, not by a federal agency.

How registration and seizure work

The program launched on April 2, 2024, through a platform at meucelular.sspds.ce.gov.br, according to the newspaper O Povo. Owners register a phone's brand, model, IMEI number and purchase invoice in advance. If a registered device is stolen or lost, the owner activates an alert — orange for the first 72 hours — and must file a police report to escalate it to a "restricted" status, O Povo reported.

According to PoderNews, military police officers use a mobile app during routine stops to check whether a phone carries an active restriction flag. Devices found to be restricted are seized on the spot and handed over to the Civil Police, which works to return them to the registered owner.

Recovery totals through 2026

The figures for July come from O Povo's report on a handover ceremony that day; the October figures come from the Civil Police and PoderNews. The program periodically holds similar ceremonies in Fortaleza to return recovered phones once owners are identified.

Crime figures cited alongside the program

PoderNews reported that, between January and September 2026, phone robberies in Ceará fell 55.6% and phone thefts fell 15.8%; the report did not state what prior period those figures were compared against. For the first half of 2026 specifically, O Povo reported a 52.4% drop in robberies (3,865 cases versus 8,124 in the first half of 2025) and a 16.5% drop in thefts (6,609 versus 7,911 cases). The two sets of figures cover different, overlapping reporting windows and were published by different outlets.

O Povo also reported that officials urged residents to be cautious about buying phones at prices well below market value without a receipt, warning that such devices may be stolen.

Part of a wider pattern among Brazilian states

Ceará's program is not unique to that state. The neighboring state of Piauí launched its own device-recovery initiative, called "Meu Celular de Volta," in 2023. By October 2026 it had recovered more than 17,000 devices, according to Portal Cidade Modelo, which cited Piauí's state security department. In Teresina, Piauí's capital, the outlet reported that theft cases fell 59.79% compared with 2022 and robbery cases fell 80.91%, based on police statistics covering January–September 2026.

O Povo reported separately that Ceará's program was itself inspired by Piauí's earlier system, which the outlet said had recovered roughly 4,000 phones and cut theft and robbery in Teresina by about 40% since 2023. Each program is run independently by its own state government and police forces; there is no single national Brazilian program under the "Meu Celular" name.