A report said London has declined into a global center of cellphone theft.
According to the New York Times (NYT) on the 15th (local time), about 80,000 cellphones were stolen in London last year, and police confirmed that a significant number of them were smuggled overseas to places such as China and Algeria. The Metropolitan Police Service recently raided a used-phone shop in north London and seized about 2,000 stolen phones and 200,000 pounds (about 340 million won) in cash.
Until now, cellphone theft had been regarded as simple pickpocketing, but recent investigations revealed involvement by international groups on an industrial scale. In December last year, a victim used the Find My iPhone feature to trace their device to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport, where 1,000 stolen phones were found in a cargo box bound for Hong Kong. Police then deployed firearms and narcotics units to pursue the case and detected indications that tens of thousands of stolen phones had been exported to China.
China was identified as a major destination for the illegal transaction. Professor Jos Wright of Oxford University noted, "Because some Chinese telecom operators do not join the international blacklist, stolen phones blocked in the U.K. operate normally in China." In China, the latest phones sell for up to $5,000, and theft rings were found to generate revenue of up to 300 pounds (about 400,000 won) per device.
The theft structure consisted of three stages. Initially, there are thieves who ride electric bicycles, wear masks, and snatch phones out of pedestrians' hands; in the middle are traders who buy stolen phones and resell them; and finally there are groups that export them overseas. Across central London, incidents have surged in which these thieves use high-speed electric bicycles to grab phones from pedestrians and flee. Police said, "Chasing them is extremely dangerous in London's congested city center," noting limits to their response.
While London's overall theft rate has fallen, cellphone theft has surged. It accounted for 70% of theft cases last year, and only 495 of 106,000 reported stolen phones led to charges. Experts pointed to the Conservative government's austerity policies in the 2010s, which cut police staffing and budgets and effectively halted enforcement against minor offenses, as a key cause.
Criminologist Emmeline Taylor of the University of London said, "As the perception spread that minor offenders would not be caught, crime became normalized." On top of that, electric bicycles, which spread rapidly starting in 2018, became a primary tool for thieves, making police pursuit more difficult.
The Metropolitan Police Service recently recovered 4,000 stolen phones through crackdowns and moved to dismantle illegal transaction networks and raise public awareness. Police said, "Cellphones are now crime targets no different from cash," urging the public to avoid the habit of using phones defenselessly on the street. Professor Lawrence Sherman of the University of Cambridge warned, "If a phone is a 1,000-pound wallet, walking with it in your hand exposes you to criminals."