🔗 Share this article

Police report they have dismantled an international gang believed of illegally transporting up to 40,000 stolen handsets from the UK to Mainland China over the past year.

In what law enforcement describes as the UK's most significant operation against phone thefts, eighteen individuals have been detained and in excess of two thousand stolen devices discovered.

Law enforcement suspect the criminal group could be culpable for sending abroad up to one half of all mobile devices stolen in the city - where the majority of mobiles are snatched in the United Kingdom.

The Inquiry Initiated by One Phone

The investigation was triggered after a victim located a pilfered device last year.

It was actually on Christmas Eve and a individual remotely followed their stolen iPhone to a storage facility close to the international hub, a detective revealed. The security there was eager to cooperate and they located the device was in a box, among nearly 900 additional handsets.

Police determined the vast majority of the devices had been pilfered and in this situation were being sent to Hong Kong. Further shipments were then intercepted and authorities used investigative techniques on the parcels to locate two suspects.

Intense Arrests

When the probe focused on the individuals, police bodycam footage documented officers, some carrying electroshock weapons, conducting a dramatic roadside apprehension of a automobile. Within, officers found handsets encased in aluminum - a strategy by offenders to move snatched handsets without being noticed.

The men, the two citizens of Afghanistan in their mid-adulthood, were charged with plotting to handle pilfered items and conspiring to conceal or remove stolen merchandise.

When they were stopped, numerous devices were found in their car, and roughly another two thousand handsets were found at properties associated with them. Another individual, a twenty-nine-year-old person from India, has subsequently been charged with the equivalent charges.

Growing Handset Robbery Issue

The number of handsets snatched in the capital has almost tripled in the last four years, from twenty-eight thousand six hundred nine in the year 2020, to over 80K in the current year. The majority of all the handsets taken in the UK are now stolen in London.

In excess of 20M people travel to the city each year and popular visitor areas such as the shopping area and political hub are frequent for handset theft and pilfering.

A growing desire for used devices, locally and overseas, is suspected to be a significant factor underlying the rise in pilfering - and numerous victims ultimately never getting their devices back.

Lucrative Underground Operation

Authorities note that various perpetrators are abandoning drug trafficking and shifting toward the mobile device trade because it's more profitable, a policing official stated. If you steal a phone and it's worth hundreds of pounds, it's clear why criminals who are one step ahead and aim to benefit from new crimes are turning to that world.

High-ranking officials said the illegal network particularly focused on devices from Apple because of their financial gain internationally.

The inquiry discovered street thieves were being rewarded up to three hundred pounds per device - and officials stated pilfered phones are being sold in China for approximately £4,000 per device, because they are connected and more appealing for those attempting to circumvent controls.

Law Enforcement Action

This marks the most significant effort on handset robbery and robbery in the UK in the most unprecedented series of actions law enforcement has ever executed, a top official announced. We have broken up criminal networks at every level from low-tier offenders to international organised crime groups sending abroad many thousands of snatched handsets annually.

Many targets of phone theft have been skeptical of law enforcement - like local law enforcement - for failing to act sufficiently.

Frequent complaints entail police failing to assist when individuals report the precise current positions of their stolen phone to the authorities using tracking services or equivalent location tools.

Victim Experience

In the past twelve months, an individual had her handset pilfered on Oxford Street, in central London. She explained she now feels uneasy when traveling to the city.

It's very disturbing being here and obviously I don't know the people surrounding me. I'm worried about my bag, I'm concerned about my handset, she explained. I believe the police should be doing a lot more - possibly setting up some more CCTV surveillance or determining whether possibilities exist they have some undercover police officers specifically to tackle this challenge. In my opinion owing to the quantity of cases and the figure of victims getting in touch with them, they don't have the funding and capacity to manage each situation.

For its part, the city's law enforcement - which has employed digital channels with multiple recordings of law enforcement tackling handset thieves in {recent months|the past few months|the last several weeks