My phone was one of thousands stolen in London this year. Like many others, it was sold in China
It only took a second for my phone to be snatched from a mountain at a central London intersection in late April.
And less than four weeks to travel more than 9,000 kilometers and appear on the streets of Shenzhen, China.
My iPhone 17 Pro Max, which sells for approx £1,100 ($2,000) in London, was swept up by a sophisticated criminal network that London’s Metropolitan Police Service (MET) says includes street thieves who steal tools and “handlers” who smuggle tens of thousands of phones into the international market every year.
“Phones are a big asset. People don’t just steal them to get £20 or something,” he said. Detective Superintendent Gareth Gilbert, who leads a police initiative against phone theft in the Southwark area of London.
“There is a lot of data on those phones,” he said. “And resale value.”
Based on the number of phone thefts that police say will happen in London in 2025, that would mean a phone was stolen every seven to eight minutes.
The city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, recently made the commitment £4.5 million pounds ($8 million Cdn) trying to fight what he described as a scourge fueled by criminals who make millions buying back stolen phones and selling them abroad.
2 men on a moped
Usually, the kidnappers wear black, their faces hidden by masks and balaclavas. They usually ride e-bikes or mopeds – in my case it was two men on a moped.
I’ve never cycled to work in London, but on April 22nd with the tube strike underway and lovely spring weather in the forecast, I decided to cycle to the CBC office near Oxford Circus.
At about 9:15 pm, on my way home for the day, I had my phone on my wrist to look at the map, because as a newbie to the cycle commute, I wanted a quiet route out of central London.
When I stopped at an intersection near Regent’s Park, just a few blocks from the CBC office, two men on a moped pulled up behind me, then pulled forward.
The moped paused at the light, before suddenly turning in front of the black cab in the next line.
I remember thinking it was sloppy at the time, and it also freaked me out as the rider on the moped was wearing a neon safety vest.
The next thing I knew, the moped was next to meand the man in the vest took my bike and held the phone outside the mountain.
It was gone before I realized it had been stolen.
‘The sharpest network’
According to the MET, more than 70,000 phones stolen from the UK capital by 2025, which officials see as a good thing, as there were more than 80,000 last year. The authorities say that these thieves are targeting students who are being abused and are promised that they will earn $400 or $500 over the phone.
Police are deploying additional law enforcement tools including drones, live facial recognition and their bikes to help catch criminals. But only a very small part of the phones were found.
“It’s a very sharp network and within 24 hours or 48 hours, it could be wrapped in foil and gone,” Gilbert said in an interview with CBC News.
Gilbert says phone thieves often use aluminum foil as a crude stand-in for a Faraday bag, which is often made of multiple layers of metal to prevent electronics from sending and receiving signals that allow the phone to be tracked.
Aluminum foil can have the same effect, and during an investigation, police say they found the suspects buying more than two miles of aluminum foil at Costco.
Both iPhones and Android devices come with a tracking service. In Apple’s case, it’s called Find My Phone and it can use Wi-Fi, cellular signals and Bluetooth networks to locate the phone.
After mine was stolen, I realized that it had been taken to the northern part of the city. A few days later, it moved further east.
When I checked Find My Phone on my new phone on May 18, I saw the last known location of my phone was a street in Shenzhen, China.
From the UK to China
China is a leading destination for stolen phones. Those that are unlocked are resold, and those that cannot be used are disassembled and sold for parts.
In December 2024, the MET launched an investigation after a box containing about 1,000 phones was found in Hong Kong in a Heathrow warehouse. The discovery started what police called Operation Echosteep, which led to the seizure of more than 10,000 stolen iPhones and 14 arrests.
Police believe investigations have uncovered the UK’s largest mobile phone smuggling network and that the criminals are responsible for smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in 2024 and 2025.
When the police announced the arrest of these, they detailed their investigation by releasing videos, photos and more a behind-the-scenes piece.
This public campaign can be seen as an attempt to stop public criticism that the police are not doing enough to investigate the theft of phones.
Stealing live streaming
Last fall, Isaac Anderson, a pastor and evangelist, was broadcasting a live prayer while walking around 7 a.m. in the Walthamstow area of London, when his phone was snatched by a young man on a bicycle.
As the live stream continued, the terrified thief, who was working with another man on an e-bike, was trying to intercept the Facebook video as he fled.
Anderson fell hard on his stomach while trying to chase and ended up in the hospital. He said he reported that his phone was stolen and the police told him they would call him.
“I thought the police would respond … but I didn’t hear anything,” he said. “I can say that they disappointed me because I thought they could follow it.
Police officials have been calling on technology companies to make phones easier to intercept and track.
Among the changes, they want companies like Apple and Google to create a system to block the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number – the unique 15-digit number each phone has – if it’s reported stolen.
Currently mobile phone companies in the UK can use IMEI to prevent a stolen phone from connecting to a mobile network, but this is not the case in all countries.
The police also want technology companies to be able to prevent stolen phones from being connected to cloud services, and the MET has given companies up to June 1 to take actionor it will call on the British government to make laws.
Police target ‘crime hotspots’
After I reported my iPhone stolen, I had several conversations with the police, including some that happened while I was riding, that were scheduled before my phone was taken.
On April 24, the CBC and other news organizations were given access to the police operation which aims to see police teams, including some on motorbikes, being sent to police “crime hotspots” south of the River Thames, where thieves are known to operate.
In a period of 12 hours, the police said they arrested 15 people for robbery, theft and drugs, but when CBC was in the car with two police officers, the team could not catch the phone thieves even though the calls were coming through the radio.
Thieves are often on old, high-powered bikes that are able to get into the closed streets of London, riding in a way that the police can’t because of the danger they pose to the public.
“I feel like when we are most successful [the criminals] they got greedy, and they wanted to grab 15 or 20 phones at a time,” said Sgt. Rob Dewing.
“We need a lot of resources put into it to really stand a chance.”
