A global gang behind up to 40 percent of all phones stolen in London have been taken down by police.
While phone theft may be a widespread problem across the UK, it’s hardly a secret at this point that things are particularly rough in the capital.
Plenty of Londoners will shake their head in disbelief when they see tourists loosely holding their phone in the air to take a snap of a landmark, while others grip theirs while standing at the edge of the pavement.
The Metropolitan Police says there were around 80,000 devices stolen in the city in last year alone, as the largest crackdown on mobile theft and robbery in the UK was undertaken by the force.
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And while many of the phones stolen were from London, they seemed to end up in a surprising location.
The Met says it has disrupted an international network suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 phones from the UK to China over the past 12 months.
After a victim tracked their stolen iPhone to a warehouse, a box containing roughly 1,000 iPhones being shipped to Hong Kong was found by officers near Heathrow Airport, and the force launched Operation Echosteep.
Police say almost all the phones in this box had been stolen, and so went on to intercept further shipments, using forensic evidence found on the packages to identify the suspects.
And then on 20 September, a man was charged with handling stolen goods after he was stopped with 10 suspected stolen phones at the airport.
Investigations then revealed he had travelled between London and Algeria over 200 times within two years. And three days later, two others were arrested in north-east London also on suspicion of handling stolen goods.
With a number of phones found in their car, around 2,000 more devices were found at properties linked to the suspects.
On 25 September, two more men were arrested on suspicion of money laundering and handling stolen goods after officers recovered around £40,000 in cash at a phone shop.
A number of stolen devices were seized during the search, with the men bailed pending further investigation.
Following a two-operation, a total of 46 arrests were made, with 11 made while police tackled criminal gangs robbing delivery vans for the new iPhone 17.
Another 15 have been arrested over this past week on suspicion of theft, handling stolen goods and conspiracy to steal.
The Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, thanked the Met for ‘responding to Londoners’ concerns’.
“This is, without doubt, the largest operation of its kind in UK history, and it was humbling to see first-hand how the Met are going after the leaders of international smuggling gangs as well as the street robbers and snatchers fuelling this industrial-scale crime,” Khan said.
“Thanks to our record funding, the Met are boosting visible neighbourhood policing across London and deploying specialist operations in hotspot areas like Westminster and the West End, where nearly 40 percent of phone thefts occur.
“This crackdown has already led to hundreds of arrests and thousands of handsets seized, contributing to a 13 percent drop in theft and robbery across London in the first quarter of this year.”
Detective Inspector Mark Gavin, the senior investigating officer for Operation Echosteep, added: “Finding the original shipment of phones was the starting point for an investigation which uncovered an international smuggling gang which we believe could have been responsible for exporting up to 40 percent of all the phones stolen in London.
“Behind every one of those phones is a victim. People keep their lives on their phones, and it can be heartbreaking when they’re stolen."
Jess Battison