Met crackdown on gangs recruiting youngsters to steal telephones for cash on Snapchat | EUROtoday

Criminal gangs within the capital are recruiting youngsters to steal the newest Apple iPhones in alternate for £380 utilizing the social media platform, Snapchat.

Teenagers as younger as 14 are being enticed by ads of money rewards for various fashions of stolen cellphones.

One Snapchat flyer seen by the police supplied £380 for the newest iPhone 16 Max mannequin, £220 for an iPhone 15 and £20 for an iPhone 12. Thieves would even be rewarded with £100 bonuses in the event that they had been in a position to steal ten or extra telephones in a single drop, as reported by The Guardian.

The costliest prizes had been supplied for latest Apple telephones, as a result of the Met believes they’re much less protected and thus simpler to ship abroad and reactivate for worldwide markets within the Gulf and China. However, Samsung telephones had been afforded much less as a result of they had been tougher to reactivate for abroad use.

Once stolen, the kid thieves had been then advised to message a “handler” on Snapchat to rearrange the alternate.

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In response to the rising drawback, the Met Police is deploying drones to seize proof, Sur-Ron e-bikes to outpace fleeing criminals, and dwell facial recognition in its largest ever crackdown on telephone thefts. The Met can be increasing its fleet of e-bikes, with 20 extra Sur‑Rons on account of arrive within the coming months and all of the riders are extremely skilled.

London is without doubt one of the most infamous cities within the UK for telephone thieves to strike and so the Met Police has focused their efforts to chop cell phone theft offences within the metropolis by 10,000 up to now 12 months.

Over the final 4 weeks alone, officers made 248 arrests associated to telephone theft and seized about 770 stolen telephones as a part of intensified exercise throughout London to determine and arrest suspects. An additional 122 individuals had been arrested for different offences as a part of the broader operation.

As a end result, cell phone theft offences in London have dropped from 81,365 in 2024 to 71,391 final 12 months – a fall of about 12.3 per cent.

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley mentioned: “We are relentlessly cracking down on phone thieves and dismantling organised criminal networks at every level – from the pickpockets and phone snatchers operating on our streets, to the handlers who profit from their crimes, right through to the international networks exporting stolen phones overseas.”

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Mr Rowley additionally referred to as on producers and tech corporations to do extra to cease criminals from having the ability to reset, reuse or resell stolen telephones as mentioned “policing alone cannot solve this problem.”

He added: “We also need the courts to play their part by preventing repeat offenders being bailed only to go out and offend again, undermining the hard work officers are doing to keep communities safe.”

Commander Andrew Featherstone, the Met’s lead for tackling telephone theft, mentioned the brand new “tactics are delivering results” citing how in “hotspot areas such as the West End, theft is already down by 30 per cent since April last year.”

Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, mentioned: “Thanks to record funding from City Hall, the Met is investing in new state of the art technology to turbo-charge their efforts to bear down and be tough on mobile phone crime.

“But we know there is still more to do. Which is why as Mayor I’ll continue to prioritise neighbourhood policing and will continue to push the mobile phone industry to go much further in preventing stolen phones being used, sold and repurposed, building a safer London for everyone.”

A spokesperson for Snapchat mentioned: “Using Snapchat to organise and promote any illegal activity including theft is strictly against our rules. If we discover this activity, we will take action on the account.

“We encourage people to report any instances of illegal activity using our in-app reporting tools. We also continue supporting law enforcement investigations to help keep this activity off our platform and bring criminals to justice.”