Gang jailed after handling millions of pounds worth of smartphones and defrauding victims

The men kept a ledger with detailed codes of more than 5,000 devices - some were then used to make high street purchases, while most are thought to have been sold overseas, ITV News' Sam Leader reports

Four men have been jailed after detectives smashed a phone-theft gang in London that handled more than 5,000 stolen devices.

Owners were robbed of their phones in the capital and the gang used them to steal thousands of pounds from bank accounts.

Prosecutors believe the group made around £650,000 from selling the phones, and said the total cost to the consumer – assuming all the phones were bought new – comes to up to £5.1 million over the group's 18-month stint handling the stolen smartphones.

Victims used Find My iPhone software to track their stolen phones to addresses where the defendants lived.

The gang didn't just sell on the stolen devices, but also used the phones to drain victims' bank accounts.

The men were convicted of a variety of offences, including handling stolen goods, committing fraud by false representation and possessing control ID documents with improper intention.

The judge said Zakaria Sanidjki, 31, was "the one who was playing the lead on this very serious offending", and he received an eight-year sentence.

Ahmed Abdelhakim Belhanafi, 25, was handed a sentence of four years and eight months.

Nazih Cheraitia, 31, was handed a sentence of three years and five months, and Riyadh Mamouni, 25, two years and eight months.

The court heard that the victims targeted were a ratio of three to one women to men. Most of the thefts took place at the weekend, late at night, or early in the morning in central London.

Judge James O’Keefe said: "The thief will only steal the phone if there is a marketplace.”

Between December 2022 and February 2024 the group handled phones that had been stolen from across London and two of the men made purchases or took out loans using the devices.

Detectives found 170 phones believed to have been stolen when they executed two warrants at addresses in central London. They calculate thousands more were victims to the group.

Smartphones were found wrapped in tin foil in an attempt to block the signal and prevent victims from tracking their devices before they left the London address where they were being kept.

Many victims also had their bank accounts drained, as police tracked CCTV of two in the group spending victims' money at Pret A Manger, Apple stores, JD Sports and Boots.

Southwark Crown Court heard that one woman had more than £55,000 taken from her bank account as a result of fraud after her phone was stolen - another had so much money taken that her credit rating plummeted and she was unable to get a mortgage.

One man was knocked to the ground and is now scared of going out in public and has had to take time off work, while some students were left unable to fund their university education after their loans were stolen from their accounts.

Multiple other victims have been seriously assaulted on the street as the thieves tried to take their devices.

The gang kept a detailed ledger of each phone stolen, including details such as the model, storage and battery life.

The ledger even appeared to sometimes mention the colour of the device and occasionally added up the money they could make from the stolen phones.

It identified more than 5,000 victims who had had their phones stolen by the gang, with 98% of the entries being Apple iPhones, the court heard.

Last year, more than 64,000 mobile phones were reported to the police as stolen in London, with hundreds of people claiming their devices were appearing abroad just days later.

For a number of years phones stolen across the world have been tracked and appear to end up on a number of specific streets in Guangdong, China.

It's thought the gang sentenced on Thursday was selling the stolen devices abroad in what police have described as "organised criminality".

The Metropolitan Police's lead on acquisitive crime, Commander Owain Richards, told ITV News authorities were working with other agencies nationally and the National Crime Agency to try and understand, disrupt and identify the handlers of these phones.

"We know in this case, many phones appeared abroad, and we are absolutely determined to break the cycle and to disrupt what is organised criminality," Commander Richards said.

"Our information actually suggests that phones are not primarily stolen for parts because we know that many phones that were recorded as stolen reactivate with the mobile phone industry's cloud and app stores and we're calling on the industry to ensure that those phones are blocked and they're no longer serviceable."

The Met is urging anyone who has had a lost or stolen phone to use the National Mobile Phone Register so recovered phones can be restored.

Police say phone users should take simple steps to further protect themselves from fraud, by ensuring they have a strong password, two-factor authentication and turn off message previews so thieves cannot see any messages about reset or log in codes when phones are locked.

People should also write down and safely stored their IMEI number.

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