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Law enforcement announce they have dismantled an worldwide gang suspected of smuggling approximately forty thousand snatched handsets from the Britain to Mainland China in the last year.

As part of what the Metropolitan Police describes as the UK's biggest operation against mobile device theft, 18 suspects have been arrested and in excess of 2K snatched handsets found.

Authorities believe the syndicate could be responsible for sending abroad as much as half of all mobile devices pilfered in the capital - a location where most handsets are snatched in the Britain.

The Probe Triggered by A Single Phone

The inquiry was sparked after a victim tracked a pilfered device last year.

It was actually on Christmas Eve and a individual electronically tracked their snatched smartphone to a distribution center in the vicinity of Heathrow Airport, a law enforcement official revealed. The guards there was eager to cooperate and they discovered the phone was in a box, alongside 894 other devices.

Law enforcement discovered nearly every one of the devices had been pilfered and in this instance were being shipped to the special administrative region. Further shipments were then intercepted and officers used forensics on the boxes to identify two suspects.

Dramatic Arrests

When the probe focused on the pair of suspects, officer-recorded video documented police, some carrying electroshock weapons, carrying out a dramatic mid-road interception of a car. In the vehicle, police located handsets wrapped in foil - an attempt by criminals to move stolen devices without being noticed.

The men, the two individuals from Afghanistan in their 30s, were accused with plotting to handle pilfered items and conspiring to disguise or move stolen merchandise.

Upon their apprehension, multiple handsets were found in their automobile, and about another two thousand handsets were discovered at properties linked to them. A third man, a twenty-nine-year-old person from India, has afterwards been indicted with the same offences.

Rising Mobile Device Theft Issue

The number of phones pilfered in the capital has nearly increased threefold in the last four years, from over 28K in two years ago, to 80,588 in the current year. Three-quarters of all the phones pilfered in the UK are now taken in London.

Over 20M people come to the city each year and popular visitor areas such as the theatre district and government district are prolific for phone snatching and robbery.

An increasing need for pre-owned handsets, both in the UK and abroad, is suspected to be a key reason behind the surge in robberies - and numerous individuals ultimately not retrieving their devices back.

Rewarding Criminal Enterprise

Authorities note that various perpetrators are ceasing narcotics trade and transitioning to the mobile device trade because it's higher yielding, an authority figure stated. When a device is taken and it's valued at several hundred, you can understand why criminals who are proactive and aim to benefit from new crimes are turning to that world.

High-ranking officials said the illegal network specifically targeted devices from Apple because of their profitability abroad.

The investigation discovered low-level criminals were being rewarded as much as 300 GBP per device - and authorities stated stolen devices are being marketed in the Far East for up to £4,000 per device, since they are connected and more appealing for those seeking to evade censorship.

Authorities' Measures

This represents the biggest operation on mobile phone theft and robbery in the United Kingdom in the most remarkable collection of initiatives the police force has ever executed, a high-ranking officer declared. We have disrupted criminal networks at every level from low-tier offenders to worldwide illegal networks exporting many thousands of pilfered phones annually.

A lot of victims of device pilfering have been doubtful of police - including local law enforcement - for failing to act sufficiently.

Common grievances include police refusing to cooperate when individuals report the exact real-time locations of their snatched handset to the law enforcement using location apps or equivalent location tools.

Individual Story

The previous year, one victim had her phone snatched on a major shopping street, in downtown. She explained she now feels uneasy when coming to the metropolis.

It's quite unsettling visiting the area and clearly I'm not sure the people surrounding me. I'm concerned about my belongings, I'm concerned about my phone, she revealed. I think law enforcement could be implementing far greater - maybe establishing further security cameras or determining whether possibilities exist they employ covert operatives in order to combat this issue. I think owing to the quantity of occurrences and the number of victims reaching out with them, they don't have the resources and capability to manage each situation.

In response, the metropolitan police - which has utilized social media platforms with various videos of officers tackling phone snatchers in {recent months|the past few months|the last several weeks