London Police Dismantle International Ring Smuggling Stolen Phones

London police said they have dismantled an international organised crime network suspected of smuggling tens of thousands of stolen mobile phones overseas after a tracking alert led officers to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport. The Metropolitan Police launched Operation Echosteep in December 2024 after a victim used a Find My iPhone tracker to locate a device in a shipment. Officers say they found about 1,000 iPhones boxed at the site and, following searches and forensic work, arrested a total of 46 people in a two-week operation that recovered thousands more devices.

Police described the operation as the largest crackdown on mobile phone theft in the UK. Investigators say the network is suspected of exporting as many as 40,000 stolen phones from the UK to China in the past year, which they estimate may amount to as much as 40 percent of phones stolen in London. Searches at 28 addresses across London and Hertfordshire yielded roughly 2,000 further devices, and officers seized cash and other items, including tablets, laptops and watches, during linked searches.

Detective Inspector Mark Gavin, the senior investigating officer for Operation Echosteep, said the discovery of the...