THIEVES are stealing personal details from bank, credit card and shopping apps by duping victims into unlocking their phones, a Sun on Sunday probe has revealed.
The sneaky tactic includes criminals asking unsuspecting strangers for directions so that they open their mobiles to access online maps before the devices are grabbed.
Crooks have also posed as charity workers, targeted passers-by on calls and snatched handsets from festival-goers taking selfies.
The ploys, which are sweeping our High Streets, have fuelled the number of phones nicked here, with more than half a billion pounds worth swiped each year.
Davie Ure, operations director at security firm Aurelius Executive Protection, said: “Using your phone in public is becoming increasingly dangerous, particularly in London.
“Three months ago, a family friend was walking home in the evening with his partner.
“He was approached by a man asking for directions and initially he tried to get rid of him, but the person was persistent.
“When the victim opened his phone to look at the Google Maps app, the person pulled out a knife and ordered him to transfer tens of thousands of pounds to another bank account.
“Thankfully he was able to get the money back from his bank.”
Every month, 213,500 stolen handsets worth more than £50million are offered for sale to UK companies, according to the Telecommunications UK Fraud Forum (TUFF).
Resale giant MusicMagpie says the number presented to them has doubled in the past three years.
In the UK, the process of having restrictions lifted so your phone can be used on any network is known as “unlocking”.
It is common and legal, and most shops will perform the procedure for a fee of around £10.
But once the device’s unique IMEI number is reported stolen, it will be “blocked” so it can no longer function on any UK cellular network.
Sly crooks get around this by shipping the devices overseas, where foreign firms do not abide by the same strict rules.
Nicked mobiles have been tracked to countries including China, where they are stripped for parts and turned into “Frankenstein phones” — devices that look authentic but don’t contain all the original parts — and then sold on the black market.
Experts say the surge in thefts is partly due to organised criminal gangs from Eastern Europe, who often ship phones out of the country within 24 hours of obtaining them.
Theft prevention specialist Les Gray, a TUFF board member, said: “Month in, month out, we are helping legitimate UK companies avoid about £50million of stolen handsets.
“So if criminals take a phone to, say CeX, Cash Converters or MusicMagpie, or try to trade them in at Vodafone or EE, they will now fail. But most of the phones are going abroad, where companies don’t have the same code of practice.
“If you take a blocked phone to France, it will work perfectly well on all of the French networks.
“A lot pass through the Netherlands and show up throughout Europe. India, Africa and Nigeria are hotspots, too. If you walk through any market in Nigeria, you will find it full of mobile phone sellers and they’re mostly nicked from the UK. They show up all over.”
Top-of-the-range stolen iPhones sell for £200 to £600 compared to a retail price of around £1,200.
But a device’s apps are of even greater value to crooks and hackers.
Some 26 per cent of consumers now report being defrauded once their phone is lost, according to a study by money insights provider Intuit Credit Karma.
The average loss is £2,711 from banking, credit card and shopping apps.
That led to a record £45million lost to mobile banking fraud last year, according to UK Finance, with 20,032 cases logged over 12 months.
One mother reported that her son’s mobile was stolen by two knife-wielding thugs.
And, “by 8.30am, someone had hacked into his phone and taken out a loan with Halifax for £25,000”.
The unnamed woman added: “The loan was approved and issued by 11am, and the money was transferred out of my son’s account and into someone else’s.”
Some victims have reported having their drinks spiked so thieves can bypass face ID security features.
Others have been duped into opening their iPhones by robbers claiming to work for charities or asking for directions.
Les, who is also chief operating officer for security firm Recipero, said: “It’s a major problem.
“If your phone is snatched when you are talking on loudspeaker or following directions on an app, and you are not using full security measures, your phone will be unlocked.
“The thief then has your phone number, contacts, photos and access to your email. They will harvest that information and may send out phishing messages to dupe people into thinking it’s you.
“If you are logged into your banking app, as many of us are, it’s entirely possible they can access that, too. It is extremely dangerous and people are open to blackmail.
“You might have exchanged family passwords over text that will end up sold on the dark web.”
Phone thefts across England and Wales rose 20 per cent last year.
At least 316,683 were reported from January 1, 2019, to December 31 2023, according to Freedom of Information requests.
Smartphones are now the most frequently pilfered item, above cash and cards, the Office for National Statistics crime survey shows.
In fact, a phone was swiped every six minutes in London, which has become the mobile crime capital of Britain.
Met Police recorded 165,933 phone thefts over five years, an average of 2,766 a month.
This compared to 23,559 in Manchester, 13,728 in the West Midlands, 9,367 in Leicestershire, 8,815 in Kent and 8,053 in Lancashire. Wiltshire had the fewest, with just 800 cases recorded.
This week, it was revealed that Sonny Stringer, 28, from Islington, North London, stole 24 mobiles in just one morning on March 26 before being knocked off his electric bike and arrested by cops.
He will be sentenced on August 8.
Former tennis pro Annabel Croft, 57, reported her phone being snatched by a thug on a bike outside a Tube station.
She wrote on Instagram: “I just got mugged waiting for a taxi outside King’s Cross St Pancras. The man was riding a bike and wearing a black balaclava.”
However, across the country, more than 99 per cent of thefts from a person do not end in a criminal charge.
Some thugs go for the highest value handsets and bin devices that do not measure up.
Phone thefts have, in previous years, dropped in summer, while robbers spend their ill-gotten gains at sunshine holiday destinations such as Ibiza.
Andrew Pitt, group head of fraud and loss prevention at MusicMagpie, said: “Our data shows the number of stolen phones people have attempted to sell to us has grown each year over the past five years, and has as much as doubled in the last three.”
Milos Dragojevic, 40, from Montenegro, had his phone snatched while attending a conference in London on June 4.
He said: “On the way back to my hotel, I came across a street with a view straight down to Big Ben. Instinctively, I took my brand-new Samsung S24 Ultra, which costs over £1,000, out of my pocket and started taking pictures.
“Out of nowhere, a thief swooped in on an electric bike and snatched it. It happened in a second.
“Once I realised what had happened, panic set in.
“My phone was linked to two bank cards as well as my Microsoft OneDrive account, where I store business documents.
“All these thoughts raced through my mind as I stood on the street while hundreds of people passed by as if nothing had happened. I wasn’t able to sleep that night.
“Thankfully, I was able to remotely erase my phone data and lock it before anything else was stolen — but this has put me off visiting London again.”
