The international black market in stolen smartphones

Modern "pick pockets" are now  mounted on ebikes and swiping smartphones...

 The NYT has the story:

London Became a Global Hub for Phone Theft. Now We Know Why.
About 80,000 phones were stolen in the British capital last year. The police are finally discovering where many of them went.  By Lizzie Dearden and Amelia Nierenberg

" Increasingly brazen thieves, often masked and on e-bikes, have become adept at snatching phones from residents and tourists. A record 80,000 phones were stolen in the city last year, according to the police, giving London an undesirable reputation as a European capital for the crime.

...

"But last December, they got an intriguing lead from a woman who had used “Find My iPhone” to track her device to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport. Arriving there on Christmas Eve, officers found boxes bound for Hong Kong. They were labeled as batteries but contained almost 1,000 stolen iPhones.

...

"Some phones are reset and sold to new users in Britain. But many are shipped to China and Algeria as part of a “local-to-global criminal business model,” the police said, adding that in China, the newest phones could be sold for up to $5,000, generating huge profits for the criminals involved.
"
Joss Wright, an associate professor at the University of Oxford who specializes in cybersecurity, said that it is easier to use stolen British phones in China than elsewhere because many of the country’s network providers do not subscribe to an international blacklist that bars devices that have been reported stolen. 

...

"Sgt. Matt Chantry, one of the leaders of the raid last month, said in an interview that thieves on e-bikes were “a real problem.” They mount sidewalks and swipe phones from people’s hands at high speed, he said, while making themselves “unidentifiable” by wearing balaclavas and hoods. “How do you police that?” he asked.

"Attempting to chase them on London’s sometimes gridlocked streets is “high-risk,” he said, endangering pedestrians, other drivers and the offender. Ultimately, he said, the police had to ask, is the risk of a fatality worth it for a cellphone? 

...

"But the police are also hoping users will become more savvy about their personal security. Even as smartphones have become more advanced and valuable, many people’s handling of them has become less protective. For the modern phone thief, a classic mark is a pedestrian walking close to the curb, deeply absorbed by the content on a cell screen — a map, a text, a video.

“You wouldn’t count your money on the street,” said Lawrence Sherman, an emeritus criminology professor at the University of Cambridge. “But when the phone is worth £1,000, it’s like pulling £1,000 out of your wallet and looking at it as you walk.”