Phones stolen from people on the streets of London wrapped in foil to be smuggled to Asia

TWO men were arrested during a police raid at a phone shop in Seven Sisters Road which saw £40,000 in cash recovered.

It was part of the Met’s largest ever crackdown on the scourge of phone theft plaguing Londoners.

Both in their 30s, the men were arrested on suspicion of money laundering and handling stolen goods, and officers also seized stolen devices during the search of the shop in Finsbury Park on September 25.

These were two of 46 arrests followed a year-long investigation into an international criminal network suspected of smuggling 40,000 stolen phones from the UK to China.

That was about 40 per cent of all those snatched in London over the past 12 months.

Commander Andrew Featherstone, the Met’s lead for tackling phone theft, said: “We’ve dismantled criminal networks at every level, from street-level thieves to international organised crime groups exporting tens of thousands of stolen devices each year.

“We’ve shown how serious we are about tackling this issue, but we need more help from the industry. We’re calling on phone manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung to do more to support us and protect their customers – especially around phone security and re-use.”

The investigation – known mysteriously as Operation Echosteep – began last December when a box of 1,000 iPhones was found at a warehouse near Heathrow Airport, bound for Hong Kong.

When officers discovered almost all the phones had been stolen, they drafted in specialist detectives usually found investigating armed robberies and drug smuggling.

Forensics on the packages identified two men, and police found around 2,000 more devices in their car and at properties they had links to.

Detective Inspector Mark Gavin, the senior investigating officer for Operation Echosteep, said: “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.

“We heard from people who had lost photos of deceased relatives and others who were violently assaulted during robberies.”

DI Gavin added that this particular criminal gang targeted Apple products because of their profitability overseas – street thieves were being paid up to £300 per handset, but the devices could be sold for $5,000 in China.

Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan thanked the Met for their efforts against phone crime, and said it was “humbling” to see them going after both the international lynchpins of theft gangs as well as the street snatchers fuelling the crime.

He added: “But the police can’t do it alone. I will continue to call on the mobile phone industry to go harder and faster in designing out this crime by making stolen devices unusable.

“We need coordinated global action to shut down this trade and build a safer London for everyone.”