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BIGGEST PHONE Smuggling Gang SMASHED -Sent 40,000 Stolen UK Phones to China
BIGGEST UK PHONE Smuggling Gang SMASHED - Sending 40,000 Stolen UK Phones to China
Britains Phone Theft Kingpins; Gang who export HALF of UKs snatched handsets and made a fortune shipping 40,000 to China is smashed in dramatic raids ONE iPhone Led Police to Gang Suspected of Sending Up to 40,000 Stolen UK Phones to China MailOnline/BBC 8 OCT 2025 https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1/2025/10/...9761299193.jpg https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standar...dbb8619e94.jpg Officers armed with Tasers stop a specially adapted people carrier and arrest alleged gang leaders codenamed Seagull and Heron. The pair are thought to have exported 40,000 phones stolen in London to China and Hong Kong https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10...9761014998.jpg The pair used a specially adapted people carrier that had been converted into a mobile 'chop shop' equipped with multiple chargers to test the phones and tin foil to wrap them in to block the tracking signal https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standar...7e3e2c2fc7.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10...9775717909.jpg Phone snatchers often use ebikes or mopeds to make off at speed https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10...9761041916.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10...9761122208.jpg Mobile phones from around the world inside the same office block in Hong Kong where Heron and Seagull had allegedly been sending devices stolen on Britain's streets https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1/2025/10/...9761163975.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10...9775770443.jpg Kymani Wilson was jailed for robbing mobile phones while riding ebikes https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10...9775773577.jpg Wilson and his accomplice, Claude Parkinson, led police on a chase from central London to Islington last May Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the past year. In what the Metropolitan Police says is the UKs largest ever operation against phone thefts, 18 suspects have been arrested and more than 2,000 stolen devices discovered. Police believe the gang could be responsible for exporting up to half of all phones stolen in London, where most mobiles are taken in the UK. BBC News has been given access to the operation, including details of the suspects, their methods, and to raids on 28 properties in London and Hertfordshire. The investigation was triggered after a victim traced a stolen phone last year. It was actually on Christmas Eve and a victim electronically tracked their stolen iPhone to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport, Detective Inspector Mark Gavin said. The security there was eager to help out and they found the phone was in a box, among another 894 phones Scotland Yard A gang responsible for exporting almost half of the mobile phones stolen on Britains streets has been dismantled in an extraordinary sting operation. Scotland Yards commissioner hailed the series of raids as the biggest counter phone theft operation in the world Roughly 300 officers smashed into 28 homes across London simultaneously in the dead of night to arrest groups of pickpockets and robbers behind an epidemic of snatch thefts. Two days previously, two Afghan gang leaders thought to be responsible for shipping 40,000 stolen devices to China and Hong Kong were dragged from their car and arrested in north London. The two men, codenamed Heron and Seagull, are at the head of a gang responsible for fuelling Britains GBP70MIL a year phone theft epidemic and were caught with a bundle of devices wrapped in foil to block their tracking signal, police chiefs said. The car driven by the pair, aged 34 and 32, was a people carrier that had been converted into a mobile chop shop used to disable and transport the stolen devices. The men had sent thousands of phones to the very same high rise block in Hong Kong that was infiltrated by Mail reporters in an investigation in July. Officers tracked a phone stolen from an estate agent on Londons iconic Baker Street across the globe to the office building, where it sat alongside hundreds of thousands of other handsets. A woman had tracked her stolen phone to a nearby warehouse and spoke with a security guard who happened to be a former Metropolitan Police officer, according to detective inspector Mark Gavin, who would later lead the operation, codenamed Echosteep. This discovery allowed the Met to identify suspects and, for the first time, piece together vital intelligence about a sophisticated supply chain involving gangsters from around the world. Detectives established that there were three levels of criminal involved in the operation; On the streets are the thieves, who can make between GB300 and GB500 for every phone they steal from an unsuspecting member of the public. Sometimes we see these almost ***in like characters who bring in a load of phones at a time from various street level thieves, Mr Gavin said. The next level up are the individuals who run shop premises where the stolen phones are collected. Then, at the head of the operation are the criminals who export the devices in bulk to their contacts overseas, with just under a third sent to Algeria, 20 per cent to mainland China and seven per cent to Hong Kong. Seagull and Heron are thought to be at this top level, Mr Gavin said. One thing with these gangs that is very unusual is that different groups of various nationalities all work together and cooperate like normal businesses because there is so much money to be made, he added. There is less of the tribal rivalry you get with drugs gangs. Indeed, we are seeing many drugs gangs move into this space because the profits are so good and there is much less risk. We are shifting some of our county lines and firearms resources onto tackling phone theft. A stolen phone can be blocked by network providers in the UK but can still function on foreign networks. Demand is high in China because Chinese made phones are often designed to block internet usage, whereas European models allow free use of the web. https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10...9761217035.jpg Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, who commended investigation tracing stolen phones across the globe https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10...9761269391.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10...9761253307.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10...9761280665.jpg L-R Sir Mark Rowley, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, policing Minister Sarah Jones and Commander Andrew Featherstone, the Mets lead for tackling phone theft This is the biggest counter mobile phone theft operation ever in the UK and probably in the world And given we're breaking down the business from the thieves, the handlers and the exporters, we should see a big effect on the amount of mobile phone theft in London. We have put together an intelligence picture that has led to this organised crime network that is exporting 40,000 phones to Hong Kong which is about half the phones stolen in London https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10...9782523171.jpg Officers arrest a Bulgarian woman accused of stealing phones across the capital Among the properties raided simultaneously at 5am on September 25 was a home in Enfield, north London, which housed 13 people, including three generations of the same family https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/html_mod...ndon-large.jpg Gang Busted After Smuggling 40,000 Stolen Phones From UK to China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l24KvZD3dsI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gyO_aOYwls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb_4prmOqKo |
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