EXCLUSIVE The 'steaming' flashmobs fuelling UK phone theft epidemic: How robbery gangs are ransacking stores to grab as many devices as possible before stolen handsets are sent to Africa or sold to second-hand phone shops
Britains phone theft epidemic is being fuelled by steaming flashmobs bombarding their way into stores and ransacking as many devices as possible in brazen 20-second heists.
Britains phone theft epidemic is being fuelled by steaming flashmobs bombarding their way into stores and ransacking as many devices as possible in brazen 20-second heists.
Gathering in their masses, these masked gangs are bursting past helpless security guards and shoppers as they sweep up any device they can get their hands on.
Dressed in black balaclavas and tracksuits, the youths lie in wait before pouncing as a mob, fleeing with dozens of phones stuffed in their pockets less than 20 seconds later.
Leading cybersecurity experts have told MailOnline that steaming flashmobs show how criminals are evolving, with police already battling marauding e-bike gangs which snatch devices from their victims.
Crime bosses usually reward these young footsoldiers with cash once they deliver the phones to handlers.
Police are homing in on two types of handler: those that stockpile devices at homes before they are shipped abroad; and dodgy second-hand phone shops which might unlock and resell stolen handsets or be a front for criminal activity.
Stolen phones have been routinely shipped 6,000 miles away to Chinas own Silicon Valley, but Met Police analysis suggests there is a new big player in the market as Algeria, in north Africa, is now at the forefront of stolen phone exports.
Thomas Balogun, an IT and cybersecurity expert, told MailOnline: Its very, very rife now. Over the years, weve always known a lot of the stolen phones in the UK and the West go to China, but the Algerian market is developing at a very rapid rate and this is only going to get worse.
A gang of youths were seen targeting the Apple store in the Brent Cross shopping centre on January 5
As the thugs raced into the store (left), shoppers, including families, could be seen fleeing (right)
Shocked shoppers watched on as the gang of youths fled the shop with devices just 20 seconds later
Apple stores across the capital, including the tech giants flagship outlet on Regent Street, were targeted on 13 separate occasions over two-and-a-half weeks just before Christmas.
Twelve teenagers, including a boy as young as 13, have been charged in connection with the brazen crime spree.
In one shocking raid caught on video, masked robbers stormed the Apple store at the Brent Cross shopping centre, in north London, and allegedly stole about 50 phones on display as stunned families fled in terror.
Addressing incidents of steaming, cybersecurity expert Jake Moore told MailOnline: The stolen phone market seems to constantly increase, whether theyre out of the box stolen from the shop, second hand or taken from the victim.
It seems that criminals are evolving in how they get hold of these devices. But until we can potentially reduce this in other ways, this is likely to continue for years to come.
Suggesting why steaming is on the rise, Mr Balogun added: The phones are brand new, and they can come there probably with the least resistance.
Nobody wants to take the risks. There might be security but you want to be very careful with trying to stop people that are nicking stuff. So its better to just report back to the police and let the police deal with it from there.
Will this sort of stuff happen again? Probably. I wouldnt dispute it because it could be the next thing out there.
But I think there needs to be some work between the phone manufacturers and the police to really come to some sort of good decision.
Gangsters have turned reselling stolen devices into a ‘global criminal business’ with London the phone snatching capital of Europe, Scotland Yard commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said
It comes after Met Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley accused tech giants including Apple and Google of enabling a phone theft epidemic with weak security measures.
Mr Rowley warned gangsters have turned reselling stolen devices into a global criminal business with London the phone snatching capital of Europe, Mr Rowley said.
The trade in stolen phones is worth an estimated £20million a year, with more than 200 snatch thefts happening in England and Wales every day.
In the capital, more than 64,000 phones were reported stolen to the Met Police in 2023 - a figure that had doubled in just two years.
Algerian Zakaria Senadjki, 31, was jailed in November after police who raided his west London home found 170 stolen phones wrapped in aluminium foil in an effort to prevent them from being tracked.
They also discovered handwritten ledgers, indicating the Algerian gang had handled more than 5,000 stolen devices over 18 months. Police believe that many of the phones were later sold abroad.
Senadjki and his Algerian associates, Ahmed Belhnafi, 25, Nazih Cheraitia, 34, and Riyadh Mamouni, 25, were jailed for a total of almost 19 years in November.
The armed police raid gave investigators one of the most significant insights into the enormous scale of phone theft in London and other cities in Britain.
Such is the demand for stolen phones abroad that gangs have been smuggling them out of the UK in bulk on cargo planes, concealing them in Faraday boxes which block any signal that might allow them to be tracked.
And Sir Mark said the situation was worsened by the fact that there is nothing stopping a stolen phone being sold by a criminal to be used again.
Zakaria Senadjki, 31 (left) was jailed for for handling more than 5,000 stolen mobiles
Ahmed Abdelhakim Belhanafi, 25, (right) and Nazih Cheraitia, 34, (left) were also jailed for their part in the phone snatching criminal group
Pictured: Some of the phones recovered from a raid on an address linked to the group on February 26
Police found 170 stolen phones wrapped in aluminium foil in an effort to prevent them from being tracked
They are making a fortune out of this, he told the Sunday Times. The organised crime business model is enabled by the reusability and resaleability of stolen phones.
With second-hand iPhones fetching up to £400, Sir Mark said that thieves could receive between £100 and £200 for every stolen handset they pass on to a handler.
Sir Mark is calling on manufacturers to make each phones 15-sigit international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) number more accessible so that victims can easily report thefts and buyers and police can check if a device has stolen.
In the long term, he called for manufacturers to install a type of kill switch that would render a stolen phone completely unusable to the thieves who snatched it.
I would have thought it would be to your competitive advantage as a business to say to your customers: the security on our device makes it less attractive to steal, he said.
The [current] inadequate security is enabling the theft. Ive heard them [manufacturers] say its so difficult to reopen a stolen phone that very few are reused.
Our data and analysis shows thats definitely not true.
Frankly if that was true there wouldnt be the resale market...so their judgments are overconfident.
Most phones stolen in Britain are then resold overseas, with a high proportion being shipped to north Africa, Sir Mark said.
A Met Police sample of 3,500 handsets show just over a fifth remained in Britain, with 22 per cent showing up in Algeria and 16 per cent sent to China.
Hitting back at Sir Marks kill switch theory, cybersecurity expert Mr Moore told MailOnline: He seems to have come up with an idea that seems perfect, but unfortunately its not possible to create a kill switch on a mobile device for the whole world.
Our map shows how gangs of bike thieves like to target the richest areas of central London around Park Lane, Mayfair and Oxford Street
So what he was talking about was, where you can blacklist a phone.
Phones get blacklisted in the UK by the network operators once theyve been reported stolen. However they can still work in other countries, such as China, India, and parts of Africa, for example.
Even with this IMEI block on them, the kill switch, as hes calling it, they will still be able to work with some specialist software in China, and its relatively easy for them to do.
Addressing how Algeria has become a hotspot for phone theft, he said: I would imagine, this would be a hunch, that criminal gangs in cities are looking for any route to countries where this kill switch doesnt apply.
And so if they were to have routes to countries, such as Algeria, then they would simply go to where those markets are if they have connections with those countries.
Mr Moore said the IMEI works like a fingerprint. That gets put on a list that the UK phone providers will look at and whatever SIM card you put in there, it just simply wont work because it knows the IMEI numbers on ther, he said.
A balaclava-clad thief was seen brazenly snatching a mobile phone from a womans hand before racing away in central London in April
So it can stop them from working, and most of Europe will also abide by this rule but criminals know exactly how to get around these things.
Cybercrime is not so small in regions such as it only says in the UK. Were talking about the whole world here, and so they can very easily be shipped out.
But if they arent successful in using the phone as a whole device unit, then the parts are worth lots of money still anyway because of the precious metals used in these phones.
They can just add to that second hand market, because even if its not working, they can break them down and sell them to parts.
Mr Moore said it was worrying to see the steaming flashmobs targeting stores, adding: I think its well documented that shop thefts are going up, and there is a huge problem up and down the country with shop theft in general.
However, there arent many items to steal that can fit in your hand or your pocket that are worth four figures. And so it does invite criminal minds to plan to steal high value items that are so small.
They are much easier to carry than laptops and theyve got a huge second hand market waiting for them in this country and in others.
CCTV captured a bike theft in July on Park Lane when another unsuspecting man had his mobile snatched in broad daylight by a crook in all black
A woman can only look on, stunned, after an e-bike rider snatched a phone from her hand on Oxford Street
Mr Balogun said another market has developed in Algeria just like in China.
The Algerian market is probably developing at a very rapid rate, he said.
It wont take long before another group spins up, and this spins into another country in North Africa there, because what youll tend to see is.
The Met has also said it is working with the Mayor of Londons office to introduce by-laws that would allow officers and the Trading Standards to inspect second-hand shops where there is suspected criminal involvement.
Mr Balogun backed these plans, explaining: I think the law needs to be stiffened properly, whereby if a phone gets tracked to a shop and its still within the UK, then that person needs to be able to answer a lot of questions.
Because how did that phone get to that person? What due diligence did you conduct? You just bought a phone off anybody? So the law needs to be tightened whereby you risk being arrested for that.
The Met has asked Border Force officials to watch out for stolen phones in the same way they might seek hidden drugs or weapons.
The force has also asked the National Crime Agency (NCA) to gather intelligence about how gangs distribute and sell phones stolen on British streets. And a Home Office-sponsored conference in February will tackle phone theft.
Sir Mark suggested the Government could force tech giants to improve security through new legislation if they continued to fail to act.
Apple, Google and Samsung said they were working with the authorities to combat phone theft and had introduced advanced safety measures to protect customers.