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Police report they have disrupted an global gang alleged of smuggling up to 40K stolen handsets from the UK to Mainland China in the last year.

As part of what law enforcement describes as the United Kingdom's biggest campaign against phone thefts, a group of 18 have been arrested and in excess of two thousand stolen devices found.

Police think the syndicate could be accountable for shipping approximately one half of all phones stolen in London - in which most mobiles are snatched in the United Kingdom.

The Investigation Initiated by A Single Phone

The probe was initiated after a victim traced a stolen phone the previous year.

The incident occurred on December 24th and a person remotely followed their pilfered Apple device to a storage facility in the vicinity of Heathrow Airport, a detective revealed. The security there was eager to assist and they located the handset was in a container, among nearly 900 additional handsets.

Police found nearly every one of the handsets had been snatched and in this instance were being sent to Hong Kong. Additional consignments were then intercepted and police used investigative techniques on the boxes to pinpoint two men.

High-Stakes Apprehensions

As the investigation honed in on the pair of suspects, police bodycam footage showed police, some armed with stun guns, executing a intense mid-road interception of a car. In the vehicle, officers discovered devices covered in metallic wrap - a method by criminals to transport stolen devices undetected.

The individuals, the two citizens of Afghanistan in their mid-adulthood, were accused with working together to accept snatched property and conspiring to disguise or move criminal property.

During their detention, dozens of phones were located in their car, and roughly an additional 2,000 phones were uncovered at locations linked to them. One more suspect, a twenty-nine-year-old person from India, has afterwards been charged with the identical crimes.

Increasing Mobile Device Theft Epidemic

The quantity of phones pilfered in the city has roughly grown by 200% in the previous 48 months, from twenty-eight thousand six hundred nine in the year 2020, to eighty thousand five hundred eighty-eight in this year. 75% of all the phones taken in the UK are now snatched in the city.

In excess of 20 million people visit the city each year and tourist hotspots such as the shopping area and Westminster are prolific for phone snatching and pilfering.

An increasing demand for pre-owned handsets, both in the UK and abroad, is believed to be a significant factor behind the surge in thefts - and a lot of victims ultimately not retrieving their devices returned.

Profitable Underground Operation

Reports indicate that certain offenders are ceasing narcotics trade and moving on to the handset industry because it's higher yielding, an authority figure remarked. Upon snatching a handset and it's priced in the hundreds, you can understand why criminals who are forward-thinking and aim to benefit from emerging illegal activities are moving toward that industry.

Senior officers said the criminal gang particularly focused on iPhones because of their monetary value abroad.

The investigation revealed low-level criminals were being paid up to £300 per handset - and police stated stolen devices are being traded in Mainland China for approximately 4K GBP each, because they are online-capable and more appealing for those seeking to evade controls.

Police Response

This represents the biggest operation on device pilfering and snatching in the Britain in the most remarkable series of actions law enforcement has ever executed, a top official stated. We have disrupted illegal organizations at each tier from low-tier offenders to global criminal syndicates exporting tens of thousands of snatched handsets each year.

Numerous individuals of phone theft have been skeptical of authorities - like local law enforcement - for inadequate response.

Common grievances entail police not helping when victims report the exact real-time locations of their pilfered device to the law enforcement using tracking services or comparable monitoring systems.

Victim Experience

In the past twelve months, one victim had her phone snatched on a major shopping street, in central London. She told she now feels uneasy when traveling to the capital.

It's very disturbing coming to this location and obviously I don't know the people surrounding me. I'm concerned about my purse, I'm anxious about my device, she explained. I think law enforcement could be implementing far greater - perhaps setting up further CCTV surveillance or determining whether there's any way they have plainclothes agents specifically to combat this problem. I think owing to the figure of incidents and the figure of victims getting in touch with them, they lack the manpower and capability to deal with every incident.

Regarding their position, the metropolitan police - which has utilized social media platforms with multiple recordings of law enforcement addressing device robbers in {recent months|the past few months|the last several weeks