Metropolitan Police have revealed that more than 80,000 mobile phones were stolen or snatched in the city last year, and evidence shows these crimes are no longer isolated street offenses but part of an organized international trafficking network.
Investigations indicate that stolen devices were being exported to overseas markets. During a series of raids in north London last month, police recovered approximately 2,000 stolen phones and about £200,000 (roughly PKR 7.49 crore) in cash. The operations targeted shopkeepers and middlemen who formed part of the network that shipped stolen phones to markets such as Hong Kong, China and Algeria.
The network came to light when, last December, a woman used an iPhone location app to trace her device to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport. Police subsequently discovered 1,000 stolen iPhones in containers bound for Hong Kong.
Senior Detective Mark Gwynn characterized the thefts as an industrial-scale, organized business, not the work of lone thieves. He noted that stolen phones can fetch up to $5,000 each in overseas markets.
