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Law enforcement announce they have disrupted an global syndicate suspected of smuggling up to forty thousand stolen cell phones from the Britain to the Far East over the past year.

Through what law enforcement describes as the UK's most significant campaign against mobile device theft, 18 suspects have been arrested and more than two thousand pilfered phones discovered.

Authorities believe the gang could be culpable for shipping approximately one half of all mobile devices stolen in London - where the bulk of phones are stolen in the UK.

The Investigation Sparked by An Individual Device

The probe was sparked after a victim located a stolen phone last year.

It was actually on Christmas Eve and a victim digitally traced their pilfered Apple device to a distribution center near London's major airport, a law enforcement official revealed. The guards there was willing to cooperate and they discovered the device was in a box, together with another 894 phones.

Officers discovered the vast majority of the phones had been stolen and in this instance were being shipped to Hong Kong. Further shipments were then seized and police used investigative techniques on the boxes to pinpoint two men.

Dramatic Apprehensions

As the investigation honed in on the two men, police bodycam footage captured officers, some with Tasers drawn, executing a dramatic roadside apprehension of a automobile. Within, authorities located phones encased in aluminum - a strategy by perpetrators to carry stolen devices without detection.

The men, the two individuals from Afghanistan in their 30s, were indicted with conspiring to receive stolen goods and plotting to conceal or remove criminal property.

When they were stopped, numerous devices were discovered in their car, and roughly another two thousand handsets were found at locations linked to them. One more suspect, a individual in his late twenties Indian national, has afterwards been accused with the same offences.

Rising Phone Theft Issue

The quantity of handsets snatched in the city has nearly increased threefold in the past four years, from over 28K in two years ago, to over 80K in the current year. 75% of all the handsets taken in the UK are now taken in London.

In excess of twenty million people come to the city each year and popular visitor areas such as the shopping area and political hub are prolific for phone snatching and robbery.

A rising desire for second-hand phones, locally and overseas, is suspected to be a major driver for the rise in pilfering - and many targets eventually never getting their handsets again.

Lucrative Criminal Enterprise

Authorities note that various perpetrators are abandoning drug trafficking and shifting toward the mobile device trade because it's higher yielding, an authority figure stated. Upon snatching a handset and it's worth hundreds of pounds, it's evident why offenders who are proactive and want to exploit new crimes are adopting that world.

Senior officers explained the criminal gang specifically targeted iPhones because of their financial gain overseas.

The probe found street thieves were being compensated approximately three hundred pounds per handset - and police said snatched handsets are being traded in China for as much as four thousand pounds per device, because they are online-capable and more appealing for those attempting to circumvent censorship.

Authorities' Measures

This marks the most significant effort on device pilfering and snatching in the UK in the most extraordinary set of operations authorities has ever conducted, a high-ranking officer stated. We have broken up criminal networks at each tier from low-tier offenders to international organised crime groups sending abroad tens of thousands of pilfered phones annually.

Many victims of device pilfering have been doubtful of police - including local law enforcement - for inadequate response.

Common grievances entail officers failing to assist when individuals report the precise current positions of their stolen phone to the police using location apps or equivalent location tools.

Individual Story

Last year, an individual had her phone pilfered on a major shopping street, in downtown. She told she now feels uneasy when visiting the metropolis.

It's really unnerving being here and naturally I'm not sure who might be nearby. I'm worried about my bag, I'm worried about my phone, she said. I think law enforcement should be doing much more - maybe installing further security cameras or checking if there's any way they've got plainclothes agents just to tackle this problem. I believe because of the number of cases and the number of people getting in touch with them, they don't have the funding and ability to deal with all these cases.

For its part, the city's law enforcement - which has taken to social media platforms with numerous clips of law enforcement combating device robbers in {recent months|the past few months|the last several weeks