NJ appeals court throws out Google location data in robbery case

The judges said the widespread use of smartphones isn’t enough to justify a search of Google’s geofence records.

A New Jersey appeals court ruled Friday that cellphone location data used to convict a man of several gas station robberies must be thrown out because police lacked probable cause to obtain it from Google.

In the Oct. 2 decision, a three-judge panel found that a lower court erred in allowing prosecutors to use the location data obtained by a Morris County detective. The judges ordered that the evidence must be suppressed and returned the case to the trial court.

The case stems from six armed robberies at gas stations in Morris and Warren counties. Investigators used Google location data to identify Michael Hobbs, who pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree robbery in January 2025 and was sentenced the following month to 11 years in prison.

Police obtained the data through geofence warrants, which required Google to search location records for devices in specified areas during specified times.

Representing Hobbs in the appeal, Assistant Deputy Public Defender Margaret McLane argued that the state failed to establish probable cause that Google’s servers would contain evidence of the crimes.

Detective Matthew Belcastro of the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office included no information in his warrant affidavit showing that the robber carried a smartphone, had a Google account with location history enabled, or was logged into the account during the robberies, McLane argued.

The appeals court judges agreed that the affidavit lacked sufficient evidence connecting the suspects to Google’s location records.

“The fact that cell phones are common, and many people always carry them, does not by itself establish probable cause to search Google’s Sensorvault,” the judges wrote, referring to Google’s cloud-based storage system. “If it did, police could seek geofence warrants in virtually every criminal investigation. That would drain the probable-cause requirement of meaning.”

McLane also challenged the search of millions of users’ location data and the warrantless identification of Hobbs’ subscriber data. She contended that the warrants were overly broad and gave police too much discretion to decide which users’ identifying information to obtain.

The judges did not address those arguments or McLane’s contention that all geofence warrants are unconstitutional.

The robberies began Jan. 21, 2022, when a man brandished a knife and robbed a Morris County Shell station of about $100. About 10 minutes later, a man robbed a Conoco gas station of about $700, according to court documents.

In both instances, witnesses described the perpetrator as a Black man who wore black clothes and drove a black BMW X6 SUV.

Three days later, two men traveling in a black BMW X6 robbed a Morris County Exxon station. The passenger pulled a handgun on an attendant, and the men made off with about $400, according to court documents. About 35 minutes later, two men in a black BMW X6 robbed a Morris County Fuel 4 station of between $200 and $300.

On Jan. 26, two men pulled up to a Warren County QuickChek, gassed up, then took about $537 from the attendant at gunpoint, according to court documents. Later the same night, two men robbed a Morris County Shell station of about $208.

While investigating the robberies, Belcastro obtained a warrant directing Google to provide location data for devices in or around the six gas stations during 30-minute windows surrounding the crimes.

At the time, Google stored location histories on its servers for users who opted into the service and enabled the necessary settings on their phones. Google responds to geofence warrants by searching those records and producing an anonymous list of responsive devices. Google has since changed how it stores users’ location histories, moving the data from its servers to individual phones.

Police reviewed the Google data and selected devices for which they wanted identifying account information, including Gmail addresses and account holders’ names.

Google responded to the second warrant with 95 anonymous account numbers. After comparing the data, Belcastro identified one account with location data recorded in all three areas covered by that warrant. Google provided data for only three of the six robbery locations because of geographic formatting errors. Belcastro then obtained a second warrant for the remaining locations.

At Belcastro’s request, Google revealed that the account belonged to Hobbs. A Morris County grand jury later indicted him on charges including five counts of first-degree robbery, one count of second-degree conspiracy to commit robbery, and several weapons offenses.

Before pleading guilty, Hobbs moved to suppress the location data. The trial court denied his motion on Dec. 5, 2024, finding that the widespread use of cellphones made it reasonable to infer that the suspects would have carried them.

The appellate judges found that Belcastro’s affidavit needed more than that inference to obtain the data. The affidavit could have included facts supporting a conclusion that the suspects used cellphones to communicate with each other during or immediately before or after the robberies. Belcastro also could have explained, based on his training and experience, that robberies involving multiple suspects typically involve cellphones for mapping purposes.

“To bridge that gap, the issuing court had to assume defendant had a smartphone, carried it during the robberies, had a Google account, had opted in to LH and location reporting, had enabled the relevant location settings, had signed in to that Google account on the phone, and had done all of those things at the time of the robberies,” the judges wrote.