The biggest phone theft ever detected in UK. From here, more than 40 thousand stolen phones have been sent to China in one year. 40% of these phones were stolen in London. Last year, 80 thousand phones were stolen in London alone. An international phone smuggling gang was involved in this theft. So far 46 people have been arrested in the case.
In fact, last year a box filled with 1,000 phones was found at London’s Heathrow Airport, which was being sent to Hong Kong. Police investigation revealed that almost all the phones were stolen. After this, in December 2024, the police launched Operation Ecostep. Then many more similar shipments were also received.
How many incidents were exposed this year
On September 20 this year, a man was arrested at Heathrow Airport with 10 stolen phones. 2 iPads, 2 laptops and 2 Rolex watches were also found with him. Investigation revealed that the person had traveled between London and Algeria more than 200 times in the last two years. Three days later, two more people were arrested. More than 2 thousand stolen devices were found in his car.
Then on 25 September almost £40,000 in cash and stolen devices were found in a phone shop in Islington. The police made a total of 46 arrests, of which 11 arrests were of gangs that were robbing delivery vans of the new iPhone 17. Last week also, 15 people were arrested on charges of theft, possession of stolen devices and conspiracy. More than 30 stolen devices found during raids at 28 different places
London Mayor’s appeal to phone companies
London Mayor Sadiq Khan praised this action of the police and said that this year there has been a decline of 13% and 14% in theft and robbery in London. He said this was Britain’s biggest operation, in which both international smuggling gangs and street thieves were hit hard.
Sadiq Khan appealed to the mobile phone industry to work quickly to render stolen phones useless so that smugglers cannot use them. He said that criminals are earning crores from stolen phones because they get access to cloud services.
Why are stolen phones sent to China?
Gavin, Senior Investigating Officer of Operation Ecostep, said that smugglers especially target Apple products because their price is high abroad. Street thieves get up to £300 for a phone. Whereas in China, the price of these phones is up to 5,000 dollars (about 3,710 pounds). i.e. the price of a phone
Commander Andrew Featherstone is the head of phone theft prevention in the Metropolitan Police. He said that this is the biggest action against mobile phone theft and robbery in Britain. Many such operations have never been done.
