Her 15 minutes of fame has come after Albury police discovered the phone and posted a selfie to her Facebook wall asking her to collect the phone from the station.

“My first thought was to delete it,” Ms Crooke said. “But then I saw the humour.”

While the post was going crazy on social media, shared and liked hundreds of times over, Ms Crooke was oblivious to it all.

The phone, which was dropped off by a security guard at a birthday party she attended, was waiting for her. 

Not knowing about the prank, sheepish-looking police keen to see her reaction began to circle.

Once they told her to check her Facebook profile, she just laughed.

The officer’s play on words that the “cell” phone was running out of battery and needed to be “charged” was, according to Ms Crooke, the best of sheer wit at play.

She retorted in pun.

“As one of the comments said, the pun police were on their A game that day, even managing to track down their Crooke,” she said.

Some users have criticised Albury police for the prank, asking questions such as whether it was “acceptable” to return the phone in such a way.

“I can see where they are coming from, but I think they had to notify me somehow and if they can do that in such a creative way, why not?” she said.

“They are legends.”

Ms Crooke, who now lives in Melbourne, said she regularly loses her phone, but would now take extra care given the public “spectacle”.

“All my friends are constantly telling me how bad I am with a phone,” she said.

“It happens quite a bit, but now I think I’m going to have to be more careful.”

One of her friends had asked if her phone had been returned, but the officer said it was still in custody at the time of inquiry.

Bail had not been posted.

Albury police said the exercise was a legitimate way to return property and encouraged people secure their phones by enabling a password.

The “novel" way to return the phone follows another social media stir that began when Wollongong police joined in on a game of street cricket on Australia Day.