80,000 handsets stolen in 2024: How London became Europe's 'phone theft capital'; UK police crack case

A 2-week police operation last month led to the recovery of around 2,000 of the 80,000 phones reported stolen in London in 2024 — a figure that earned the British capital an unwelcome label as the “European capital for phone thefts.”

Detectives also seized £200,000 ($266,000) in cash during the operations, according to The New York Times.

The devices are in addition to the 4,000 iPhones recovered in similar raids since December. The handsets are currently held in a storeroom in Putney, southwest London, as officers try to contact the owners.

The lead - and stolen iPhones

London’s Metropolitan Police, which had initially assumed that “small-time thieves” were behind the city’s wave of phone thefts, got their first major lead on Christmas Eve last year. A woman using “Find My iPhone” had tracked her stolen device to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport.

When officers arrived on December 24, they discovered boxes labelled as batteries but containing nearly 1,000 stolen iPhones bound for Hong Kong.

“It quickly became apparent this wasn’t just normal low-level street crime — this was on an industrial scale,” said lead investigator Mark Gavin.

Following the Heathrow seizure, specialist investigators who typically handle firearms and drug-smuggling cases were brought in. They traced further shipments and used forensic evidence to identify two men in their 30s suspected of leading a network that shipped up to 40,000 iPhones to China. They were later arrested and several phones - some wrapped in an aluminum foil in an attempt to prevent them from transmitting tracking signals.

The stolen devices are often reset and sold to new users within Britain, but many are also shipped to China and Algeria as part of a “local-to-global criminal business model.” In China, the newest phones can fetch up to $5,000 each, generating enormous profits for the criminal networks involved.

3-tier criminal network

Investigators say the criminal network operates on three levels: exporters sit at the top, followed by shopkeepers and entrepreneurs who purchase stolen phones from thieves and resell them to unsuspecting members of the public, while the thieves themselves occupy the lowest tier.

Phone thefts 'disproportionately' high in London

Although overall crime in London has fallen in recent years, phone theft remains disproportionately high, accounting for around 70 percent of all thefts last year. The 80,000 phones stolen in 2024 marked a sharp rise from 64,000 in 2023, according to the report.

“This crime is both very lucrative and lower risk than car theft or drug dealing,” said Commander Andrew Featherstone, the officer leading the effort to tackle phone theft, at a news conference. Thieves can make up to £300 ($400) per device — more than triple the national minimum wage for a day’s work.

Despite the scale of the problem, perpetrators are rarely caught. Police data shows that of 106,000 phones reported stolen in London from March 2024 to February 2025, only 495 individuals were charged or received a police caution.

E-bikes, introduced in London in 2018, have exacerbated the problem, as thieves can “mount sidewalks and swipe phones from people’s hands at high speed.” Balaclavas and hooded clothing make them “unidentifiable."