Four men at the centre of London’s phone snatching epidemic have been jailed for handling more than 5,000 stolen mobiles worth £5 million.
Zakaria Senadjki, 31, Ahmed Abdelhakim Belhanafi, 25, Nazih Cheraitia, 34, and Riyadh Mamouni, 25, snatched the devices out of the hands of pedestrians and tourists.
Many saw thousands of pounds stolen from their banking accounts, while others had their money spent on designer clothes.
They even took out loans in the names of some of their victims.
The group spent 18 months stealing phones, with many of the devices being sold abroad, the Metropolitan Police said.
Officers were able to bust the group after victims reported their phones were tracked online to the same two addresses.
They raided the properties in February and found 170 phones believed to have been stolen.
Police believe thousands more were victim to the group, but have been unable to track down all of the victims.
Senadjki was sentenced to eight years, Belhanafi was jailed for four years and eight months, Cheraita was sentenced to three years and five months, while Mamouni received two years and eight months.
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Commander Owain Richards, from the Metropolitan Police, said: ‘I want to commend the borough based local officers involved for their excellent work in tracking down these individuals and ensuring they were brought to justice.
‘We do not underestimate the impact these crimes have on Londoners and are doing all we can to tackle phone thefts. This includes increased policing in hotspot areas and making better use of technology.
‘However we need the phone companies to play their part and make it more difficult for criminals to re-sell these stolen devices. The Met will be speaking with them in the coming weeks to push this issue even further.’
Some 78,000 people had phones or bags stolen from them on British streets in the year to March 2024.
That is a rise of more than 150% on the 31,000 ‘snatch thefts’ in the 12 months before, according to data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
Figures also show that four in five police investigations were closed before a suspect was even found and just 0.8% of ‘theft from the person’ complaints resulted in a charge.
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