Children as young as 14 are being actively recruited on social media platforms to steal mobile phones before school, with payments of £400 per device, according to a recent investigation. Criminal gangs, which ship stolen phones to countries like Algeria, are using Snapchat to target vulnerable youngsters, offering substantial sums along with £100 bonuses to the most productive phone snatchers.
Dawn Raids and Repeat Offenders
The Daily Mail accompanied Scotland Yard officers on an early morning raid to arrest a teenager who allegedly traveled to a nearby train station at 6am to snatch phones from commuters before cycling to school. The 16-year-old suspect was already wearing an ankle tag, having been previously caught stealing multiple phones, yet continued to offend after being released.
Police Commissioner's Concerns
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley expressed deep concern, noting that he has observed social media advertisements from criminals recruiting young people in a manner similar to how county lines gangs groom children for drug trafficking. He revealed that he is urging criminal justice leaders to adopt stricter measures regarding bail and suspended sentences for repeat offenders.
Sir Mark stated, "We're arresting people for multiple offences and, frustratingly, they get bailed too often. So we're discussing with criminal justice partners about getting tough on this sort of offence. I understand that for an offender who is charged for the first time they might get put on a tag into the community, but if they breach their conditions and offend again there simply has to be consequences. They have to be kept in custody to protect the people of London."
Organised International Operation
The Metropolitan Police have been targeting both street-level thieves and more senior handlers responsible for collecting stolen devices and shipping them abroad to destinations such as Algeria and China. In the last four weeks alone, 370 arrests have been made, with 1,000 stolen phones worth approximately £500,000 seized. Intelligence indicates that the gang has smuggled thousands of devices overseas.
Crackdown Results
According to Sir Mark, the crackdown on phone theft in London has led to a reduction of 10,000 stolen devices in a year. Specifically, there were 81,365 phones stolen in London in 2024, compared to 71,391 the previous year. This effort is part of a broader clampdown on the £50 million annual trade in stolen phones.
Detailed Raid Account
The Mail witnessed one of 25 raids conducted across London last week. At around 5am on Thursday, a team of officers in riot gear quietly entered a block of flats in Hackney, northeast London, before using a battering ram to break through the door of a specific property. A tall, visibly shaken 16-year-old boy with an ankle tag on his left leg was handcuffed in his bedroom and escorted to a waiting police van.
The boy, who kept his head bowed, was allegedly a prolific phone thief who would travel to nearby Stratford station to snatch devices from commuters before cycling to school. The stolen phones would then be handed over to a handler, who would send them to be sold in Algeria as part of a sophisticated and highly profitable international operation.
Social Media Recruitment Tactics
Sir Mark highlighted that the boy is one of a growing number of schoolchildren recruited by gang leaders on social media sites like Snapchat. He explained, "The team have shown me adverts on social media showing the going rate for different stolen phones – this one for £280, this one for £300 and this model for £400. They say if you steal ten phones, you get a hundred pound bonus. It is a heavily organised trade as part of a wider international operation and to young people like him it seems like easy money."
Previous Operations and Global Links
This latest operation follows a previous crackdown where a gang responsible for exporting nearly half of the phones stolen on Britain's streets was dismantled. The Metropolitan Police hailed it as the 'biggest counter-phone theft operation in the world'. Two gang leaders, believed to be responsible for shipping 40,000 stolen devices to China and Hong Kong, were arrested in north London last September.
Notably, the gang had been exporting stolen phones to the same high-rise block in Hong Kong that was infiltrated by Daily Mail reporters in an investigation last July. The Mail tracked a phone stolen from an estate agent on Baker Street in central London across the globe to that office building, where it was found alongside hundreds of thousands of other handsets.
Sir Mark concluded by emphasising the police's ongoing efforts, stating, "But we are arresting thieves in their beds, using drones and electric bikes to catch the thieves on the streets, arresting the handlers and showing how much we are bearing down on this."
