Scotland Yard praised a ‘brilliant’ Daily Mail investigation after three members of a phone smuggling network admitted their role in a £180million trafficking operation.
The gang was responsible for almost half the phones stolen in London at the peak of their powers – and sent thousands of devices to the same high-rise block in Hong Kong that was infiltrated by Mail reporters in July last year.
This newspaper traced stolen phones from the streets of central London, through suburban British warehouses, before they landed in the international markets of Dubai, Hong Kong and, ultimately, China.
And this week, Amir Muhammad Khadikhel, Ismat Miakhel, and Mansoor Mohammed, who are all based in London and in their thirties, pleaded guilty to smuggling more than 62,000 stolen devices to China in the last year.
Their supply chains followed a remarkably similar pattern to those uncovered by the Mail.
Detectives reckoned a huge network of pickpockets – including Bulgarian girls and young women operating under a ‘Fagin’-type boss – stole mobiles from unwitting members of the public, before selling them on to around 50 middlemen such as Mohammed.
Police said he paid up to £760 for the phones – all of which were Apple devices – and then wrapped them up in tin foil in a mistaken attempt to prevent them being located.
He then passed the bundles up to Khadikhel and Miakhel – the supposed brains of the operation – who packed around 300 devices into one consignment and dispatched them with couriers such as UPS and DHL.
The Met’s investigation recovered a plethora of stolen phones from the organised crime group
(l-r) Amir Muhammad Khadikhel, Ismat Maikhel and Mansoor Mohammed, all based in London and in their thirties, pleaded guilty to smuggling more than 62,000 stolen devices to China in the last year
Undercover Mail reporters took the above image of mobile phones from around the world inside the same office block in Hong Kong where Heron and Seagull had allegedly been sending devices stolen on Britain’s streets
Police believe the duo were sending two parcels a week, while Mohammed and other middlemen had a ‘float’ of potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds to pay pickpockets for their stolen loot.
Officers said the venture is so financially rewarding that organised crime groups are abandoning the drugs markets to deal exclusively in stolen phones.
The racket was rumbled after detectives found a box containing around 1,000 iPhones being shipped to Hong Kong at a warehouse near Heathrow Airport when a member of the public used the Find My Phone feature to locate their device.
Specialist detectives brought in to track down the suspects intercepted further shipments and used forensics found on the packages to identify those involved.
The Met said the convictions were the result of a year-long investigation into the UK’s largest mobile phone smuggling networks.
Commander Andy Featherstone, the Met’s lead for tackling mobile phone theft, also heaped praise on the Mail’s ‘brilliant’ investigation, which he said ‘identified a premises in Hong Kong’ that the gang were shipping phones to.
Our attention was drawn to the warehouse after we tracked a phone stolen from an estate agent on London’s iconic Baker Street across the globe to a commercial district in Hong Kong.
We then found online messaging boards were inundated with people from the UK and US posting screenshots of their Find My App, showing their stolen phones had ended up at a 31-storey building in the area.
When our reporters visited the building, posing as traders, we discovered dozens of businesses each selling thousands of used phones of varying origin, including the UK.
Afghan national Khadikhel was arrested by police in September last year
Police stopped the defendants’ car in north London in September last year. The occupants – dubbed Seagull and Heron by detectives investigating the gang – were dragged from the car and detained in the street
Police later recovered thousands of stolen handsets, destined for Asia
A worker can be seen in a second-hand phone shop in China. Thousands of stolen phones end up in places like these (file photo)
Many were marked as ‘locked’, which other buyers told us indicated they had been stolen.
Hong Kong’s position as a global trade hub – as well as its proximity to China – has made it a key destination for the stolen phone trade.
Around 7 per cent of phones stolen in London end up in Hong Kong, according to police data.
Many of these appear to have passed through the hands of the smuggling gang convicted this week.
Afghan nationals Khadikhel, 35, of Wanstead, and Miakhel, 33, from Walthamstow, and Indian national Mohammed, 30, of Wood Green on Wednesday admitted conspiracy to handle stolen goods, and participating in criminal activities of an organised crime group.
Asylum seeker Khadikhel and Miakhel – who has a British passport – also admitted conspiracy to remove stolen goods.
The trio will be sentenced next month.
Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley hailed the coordinated raids that halted the operation ‘the ‘biggest counter-phone theft operation in the world.’
Dramatic footage showed the Afghan nationals Miakhel – known as Heron – and Khadikhel, given the moniker Seagull by detectives, dramatically dragged from their car by police while driving through north London in September last year.
The vehicle was a people carrier that had been converted into a mobile ‘chop shop’ used to disable and transport the stolen devices.
Police caught them with a bundle of devices wrapped in foil to block their tracking signal.
Commander Featherstone added: ‘We are using every tool available, including data‑led intelligence, specialist investigative teams, drones, high‑powered e‑bikes, live facial recognition, and more officers on the beat to tackle phone thieves.’
