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Police report they have disrupted an international criminal network suspected of smuggling approximately 40,000 pilfered cell phones from the Britain to China in the last year.

In what London's police force describes as the United Kingdom's largest ever operation against handset robberies, eighteen individuals have been detained and more than 2K snatched handsets found.

Police suspect the criminal group could be responsible for exporting as much as one half of all phones pilfered in London - a location where the bulk of mobiles are taken in the United Kingdom.

The Probe Sparked by An Individual Handset

The inquiry was sparked after a target located a snatched handset the previous year.

This took place on the day before Christmas and a individual remotely followed their snatched smartphone to a storage facility close to the international hub, a detective explained. The guards there was keen to cooperate and they located the device was in a container, together with 894 other devices.

Police discovered almost all the devices had been stolen and in this case were being shipped to Hong Kong. Further shipments were then intercepted and officers used forensics on the packages to pinpoint two suspects.

Intense Arrests

Once authorities targeted the two men, officer-recorded video showed officers, some armed with stun guns, conducting a high-stakes roadside apprehension of a automobile. Within, authorities discovered devices encased in aluminum - a method by criminals to transport stolen devices without detection.

The suspects, the two individuals from Afghanistan in their 30s, were indicted with working together to accept snatched property and working together to disguise or move criminal property.

Upon their apprehension, dozens of phones were found in their automobile, and about another two thousand handsets were uncovered at locations associated with them. One more suspect, a twenty-nine-year-old person from India, has afterwards been accused with the identical crimes.

Increasing Handset Robbery Epidemic

The figure of handsets pilfered in London has almost tripled in the last four years, from over 28K in two years ago, to 80,588 in the current year. The majority of all the mobile devices stolen in the UK are now snatched in London.

More than 20 million people visit the metropolis annually and tourist hotspots such as the West End and government district are prolific for mobile device robbery and theft.

A growing desire for second-hand phones, domestically and internationally, is suspected to be a significant factor behind the rise in robberies - and a lot of individuals eventually failing to recover their phones returned.

Lucrative Underground Operation

Authorities note that certain offenders are abandoning drug trafficking and moving on to the handset industry because it's higher yielding, a government minister remarked. Upon snatching a handset and it's priced in the hundreds, you can understand why offenders who are forward-thinking and want to exploit recent criminal trends are turning to that world.

High-ranking officials explained the syndicate deliberately chose Apple products because of their monetary value overseas.

The probe discovered petty offenders were being paid as much as £300 per device - and officials said pilfered phones are being traded in the Far East for up to £4,000 each, since they are connected and more attractive for those seeking to evade controls.

Law Enforcement Action

This is the largest crackdown on device pilfering and theft in the Britain in the most unprecedented set of operations law enforcement has ever conducted, a senior commander stated. We have disrupted illegal organizations at each tier from street-level thieves to global criminal syndicates sending abroad numerous of snatched handsets every year.

Many victims of device pilfering have been doubtful of police - including the metropolitan force - for not doing enough.

Frequent complaints include police not helping when victims report the precise current positions of their stolen phone to the police using Apple's Find My iPhone or comparable monitoring systems.

Personal Account

Last year, an individual had her handset stolen on Oxford Street, in downtown. She stated she now feels uneasy when coming to the metropolis.

It's very disturbing visiting the area and naturally I don't know who might be nearby. I'm worried about my purse, I'm worried about my phone, she revealed. I think authorities could be implementing a lot more - maybe setting up additional CCTV surveillance or determining whether there are methods they have plainclothes agents specifically to combat this challenge. I think due to the quantity of incidents and the number of individuals contacting with them, they are short on the resources and ability to manage every incident.

For its part, the metropolitan police - which has utilized digital channels with various videos of police addressing handset thieves in {recent months|the past few months|the last several weeks