London cops unplug iPhone crime ring said to nick 40% of city's mobiles

Met's year-long Operation Echosteep nets thousands of stolen devices and several arrests

London's Metropolitan Police says it dismantled an iPhone-robbing gang responsible for what's thought to be nearly half of all phone thefts in England's capital.

It said that on September 23, two men in their thirties were arrested in North East London on suspicion of handling stolen goods, and were later charged and remanded in custody.

The Met did not specify the nationalities of the men, but the BBC, which was given special access to Operation Echosteep, reported that they were both Afghan nationals, and another 29-year-old Indian man, whom the Met did not identify in its announcement today, was also charged with the same offences.

It said "a number of devices" were found in their car at the time of their arrest, as well as around 2,000 others at properties linked to them.

A further 30 devices were found following raids at 28 properties across London and Hertfordshire.

Officers arrested a further 15 individuals under suspicion of lesser, street-level offending such as robbery and pickpocketing, all but one of whom were also men.

Police suspect the gang was responsible for smuggling up to 40,000 phones from the UK in the past 12 months, equating to around 40 percent of all such thefts in London over that period.

Commander Andrew Featherstone, head of phone theft at the Met, said Echosteep was a landmark operation, and called on the major phone makers to support law enforcement in its crackdown on phone theft.

He said: "This is the largest crackdown on mobile phone theft and robbery in the UK in the most extraordinary set of operations of this kind that the Met has ever undertaken.

"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. Londoners deserve to feel safe, and this is a clear sign of the Met's commitment to protecting them and driving down crime.

"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 reuse."

The gang specifically targeted Apple products because of how profitable they are to sell overseas, said Detective Inspector Mark Gavin, Echosteep's senior investigating officer.

The thieves themselves were being paid up to £300 ($403) for each handset, which in some cases were sold for $5,000 overseas.

China is a major hotspot for these overseas shipments, primarily because it is not a member of the Central Equipment Identity Register – a global database used to block stolen devices.

Gavin 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."

Heathrow bust

Operation Echosteep spun up after officers intercepted a package at a warehouse near Heathrow Airport in December 2024, which contained around 1,000 iPhones destined for Hong Kong.

Almost all of the devices were stolen, the Met said, and from there, specialist detectives usually tasked with investigating armed robberies and drug smuggling were pulled into the operation.

The two Afghan men charged by police last month were tracked down after officers intercepted additional packages, and used the forensic evidence found on them to identify the suspects.

Footage shared by the Met from various arrests showed in some cases that suspects were nabbed at their homes, or in their cars, with Tasers and firearms drawn on them.

Others were tracked via police helicopter and CCTV riding on e-bikes or mopeds at high speeds throughout the capital, snatching devices out of the hands of unsuspecting pedestrians.

Over the course of the nearly year-long investigation, police continued to make further inquiries regarding additional packages shipped overseas, finding that in some cases the devices were wrapped in aluminium foil as a means to prevent tracking or arouse suspicion.

Scale of the problem

According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, published in July, between March 2024 and March 2025, around 78,000 people had their phones or bags snatched from their person on the street.

This represented a 153 percent increase compared to the year before, or 200 thefts per day.

The Independent reported that during 2024, London's Metropolitan Police handled more than three-quarters of all phone thefts nationwide, and an analysis of claims made to insurance biz SquareTrade revealed that nearly two-fifths of phone thefts across the entirety of Europe took place in the UK.

The UK crime survey, however, found no statistically significant changes in any of the main categories of theft overall, which includes phone theft, although it noted a 20 percent increase in thefts from outside a dwelling, where phone snatchings are most common.

In its announcement today, the Met said it was responding to the phone theft epidemic with targeted enforcement, which has led to significant arrests and recoveries of devices.

It added that in London specifically, personal robbery and theft were reduced by 13 percent and 14 percent respectively so far this year.

Additional arrests have been made as part of Operation Echosteep, including 11 related to a gang that targeted vans delivering brand-new iPhone 17 models, and two other men in their thirties suspected of money laundering after officers seized around £40,000 ($53,764) from a phone shop on Seven Sisters Road, Islington.

Another man was arrested at Heathrow Airport on September 20, and later charged. Officers found 10 suspected stolen phones on his person, as well as two iPads, two laptops, and two Rolex watches.

Further investigations showed he traveled between London and Algeria more than 200 times in two years, the Met said.

The National Crime Agency's National Strategic Assessment 2025 of Serious Organized Crime showed that, in addition to China and Algeria, Bulgaria, Dubai, Morocco, and Romania are also prime locations for stolen phone exports.

It said between January and August 2024, phone thefts accounted for 37 percent of all personal robberies, and that an emerging tactic deployed by these criminals is to access the data on stolen phones for use in follow-on crimes, such as bank account theft. ®