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Law enforcement report they have broken up an international gang alleged of illegally transporting as many as 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the Britain to China in the last year.

As part of what the Metropolitan Police describes as the Britain's largest ever operation against handset robberies, a group of 18 have been arrested and more than 2K snatched handsets found.

Police believe the syndicate could be responsible for exporting up to 50% of all phones stolen in London - where the bulk of handsets are snatched in the Britain.

The Investigation Triggered by One Handset

The investigation was initiated after a victim located a stolen phone the previous year.

It was actually on Christmas Eve and a victim digitally traced their pilfered Apple device to a storage facility close to London's major airport, a law enforcement official explained. The security there was willing to cooperate and they located the phone was in a box, among 894 other devices.

Officers determined nearly every one of the phones had been pilfered and in this case were being transported to the special administrative region. Additional consignments were then seized and police used investigative techniques on the boxes to pinpoint two men.

Dramatic Apprehensions

When the probe focused on the two men, officer-recorded video documented officers, some with Tasers drawn, conducting a dramatic mid-road interception of a vehicle. Inside, police found devices wrapped in foil - an attempt by criminals to move snatched handsets without detection.

The individuals, each Afghan nationals in their mid-adulthood, were accused with conspiring to receive stolen goods and conspiring to hide or transfer criminal property.

During their detention, numerous devices were discovered in their vehicle, and approximately 2,000 more devices were uncovered at addresses linked to them. A third man, a 29-year-old Indian national, has afterwards been charged with the identical crimes.

Increasing Mobile Device Theft Problem

The quantity of mobile devices snatched in London has nearly increased threefold in the last four years, from twenty-eight thousand six hundred nine in two years ago, to over 80K in this year. Three-quarters of all the phones taken in the United Kingdom are now taken in the capital.

In excess of 20M people travel to the city annually and popular visitor areas such as the West End and political hub are prolific for phone snatching and pilfering.

An increasing demand for pre-owned handsets, domestically and internationally, is suspected to be a major driver behind the surge in pilfering - and many individuals eventually not retrieving their handsets again.

Profitable Criminal Enterprise

We're hearing that certain offenders are abandoning drug trafficking and shifting toward the mobile device trade because it's more lucrative, a policing official stated. When a device is taken and it's worth hundreds of pounds, it's evident why perpetrators who are forward-thinking and aim to benefit from new crimes are adopting that world.

Top authorities explained the syndicate particularly focused on devices from Apple because of their financial gain abroad.

The inquiry revealed street thieves were being compensated approximately three hundred pounds per device - and authorities said stolen devices are being traded in China for up to £4,000 per unit, because they are online-capable and more attractive for those trying to bypass censorship.

Authorities' Measures

This is the largest crackdown on handset robbery and robbery in the United Kingdom in the most extraordinary set of operations the police force has ever executed, a senior commander announced. We have disrupted illegal organizations at every level from low-tier offenders to worldwide illegal networks sending abroad many thousands of pilfered phones every year.

Many individuals of handset robbery have been skeptical of authorities - including the city's police - for failing to act sufficiently.

Frequent complaints involve authorities refusing to cooperate when targets inform about the exact real-time locations of their stolen phone to the police using tracking services or similar tracking services.

Personal Account

The previous year, an individual had her handset pilfered on a central London thoroughfare, in central London. She explained she now feels uneasy when coming to the capital.

It's quite unsettling coming to this location and clearly I'm uncertain who might be nearby. I'm anxious about my purse, I'm concerned about my device, she revealed. In my opinion the police should be doing a lot more - maybe installing additional video monitoring or seeing if there are methods they have some undercover police officers in order to combat this challenge. I believe due to the figure of occurrences and the quantity of individuals contacting with them, they don't have the funding and capacity to manage every incident.

For its part, the metropolitan police - which has utilized online networks with various videos of police tackling device robbers in {recent months|the past few months|the last several weeks