Youm7 news website reporter was live broadcasting from a new Cairo highway near Al-Marg district to report the aftermath of an earthquake felt by Cairo residents when suddenly his mobile phone was snatched and viewers found out the mobile phone was airing the face of someone else running away on a motorcycle.

What started as a couple of  hundreds viewers on a live stream of Youm 7 Facebook page early Tuesday turned into nearly 12,000 viewers who forgot the quake and focused on that live robbery taking place as the thief did not notice that the camera was on and put the mobile phone on what seems to be the motorcycle fuel tank while driving quickly in a careless way and smoking a cigarette.

Thousand of sarcastic comments made fun of him, describing him "the worst thief of the month" , "the most unfortunate thief in the world" and "highway to jail."  

It took several minutes till he realised the mobile phone was on and needed to be shut down.

The thief was arrested later on the day, Egypt's Ministry of Interior stated on Wednesday evening.

The incident has been trending on social media with memes about "ill-fortuned thief" who was exposed in few minutes to millions of Egyptians.

Earlier on Tuesday, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake originated near Greece's Rhodes island hit the Eastern Mediterranean Sea with many residents in Egypt and other countries reporting having felt it.

*Correction: an earlier version of this report mistakenly stated that two others defendants took part in the robbery.