Doorbell security camera links to phone while homeowner is away

One company offers a service that lets users monitor a doorbell-mounted camera and interact with visitors, tricking potential burglars into thinking you're at home.

Brazen daytime burglars: They'll hit up your house and steal your stuff in broad daylight.

One thief approaches a Los Angeles home. What the thief doesn't know is that home owner, Gregg Garfield, is watching it all go down while he's at his office in real time from a special app called Ring installed on his mobile phone.

"Here's a guy standing in front of my house at 10:30 in the morning with no reason to be there," said homeowner Gregg Garfield. "And as he's looking around, it looked very suspicious -- scary actually. You got a guy about 6-5, 250 pounds -- that's taller than my door."

He breaks into the house, walking through the living room with a pillowcase bulging with loot, jewelry, watches and a gun he swiped from a drawer in the bedroom.

Gregg, horrified by what's unfolding before his eyes, calls 911. It's not long before news crews show up at the house. Looking back Gregg says the whole thing was surreal.

The thief, looking nervous, pacing back and forth on the deck, talking on his cellphone. What he doesn't know is cops are closing in. He's caught hours later hiding in the neighborhood.

"Had I not have this device I would have come home and my house would have been ransacked," said Garfield. "A gun would have potentially caused harm to people. So fortunately enough, that didn't happen. He's in custody and I got all my stuff back."

James Siminoff, the inventor of Ring, says more than 95 percent of home burglaries happen during the day, when nobody is home.

"It's a Wi-Fi doorbell, you put it right where your doorbell was on your house," said Siminoff. "Anytime someone comes on your property, it sends you an alert just like a text message to your phone. Open it up and see and speak with whoever is at your front door or on your property."

The cameras are so sharp and wide-angled, even a thief reaching into a mailbox can be detected and potentially scared off, if not caught later.

Just a few weeks after Garfield's incident, his home was hit again.

"We're up at the house in Mammoth for the weekend, we're sound asleep, and the doorbell rings at 4 o'clock in the morning, and wouldn't you know it's another guy in a hoodie at our front door," said Garfield. "We couldn't believe it's déjà vu."

Using Ring, Garfield talks to the guy from his bedroom, not getting anywhere near the door, defusing a potentially dangerous situation.