MSNBC reports that General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) NBC Dateline was able to track 12 of 20 Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPods it left as bait for thieves.

About 110 million iPods have been sold since they were introduced. And people have been murdered for them. And many iPod owners have had them stolen. Moreover, as Dateline discovered, Apple could easily track the thieves and help reunite the owners with their stolen iPods. However, despite an average of five or six calls per customer service rep per day asking for help with stolen iPods, Apple has stayed out of this problem.

Dateline's Chris Hansen created a ruse to find out whether he could track stolen iPods. He left 20 lying around for thieves to steal in cities around the U.S. And when the thieves registered their stolen iPods so they could buy songs from iTunes, Hansen had them send their name, address and other contact information to Apple and Dateline. Hansen then drove to the thieves' houses in an RV to give them a fake prize. At that point he listened to their explanations of how they got their iPods, then showed them the incriminating video of them stealing the iPods.