The man pacing up and down outside the windows of Cecconi’s in Mayfair was noticeably animated – waving his phone and ranting and raving.
But the impression that he was arguing with someone at the other end of the line was merely an act to conceal his true purpose: he was a spotter for a gang of Algerian muggers, eyeing potential targets among the wealthy diners of the chic Italian restaurant.
The two men he finally selected for mugging, enjoying a cosy supper in a window seat, were both wearing expensive watches: BBC Breakfast presenter Ben Thompson had a £7,000 Rolex while his millionaire businessman friend had a diamond-encrusted Patek Philippe worth £150,000.
Less than five minutes after the pair paid their bill and left Cecconi’s they had both been brutally attacked by a gang of six men who had ripped those watches from them so roughly that Mr Thompson was left with a scar where his watch had been.
The episode, which culminated in two of the gang appearing at the Old Bailey last week, was the clearest signal yet of a new trend on the London crime scene: Algerian gangs in London who already control the biggest market in the world for phone snatching have now graduated to more lucrative targeted muggings on the rich.
As if to underline that this is a trend, just five days later, another Algerian – a teenage illegal immigrant – was also appearing in court in London, this time at Southwark crown court, for an almost identical crime committed just 300 yards away from where Mr Thompson and his friend were attacked.
Mohamed Sellaoui, then just 17, working with another mugger who wasn’t caught, targeted a wealthy victim who had also been dining out in Mayfair.
The pair followed Jiangfeng Ni, a Chinese chemistry professor who was holidaying in London, as he left Langan’s Brasserie with a friend and violently attacked him for his £36,000 watch, again a Patek Philippe.
Mohamed Sellaoui, an Algerian teenager, trailed a wealthy tourist through Mayfair before launching a violent assault to strip a £37,000 watch from his wrist
Having staked out the restaurant, Sellaoui (circled) followed the victim toward Green Park station, meeting an accomplice en route before striking on a quiet corner
Danis Tom-Deter (left), 36, and Hocine Boulanouar (right), 26, were identified by CCTV
BBC Breakfast presenter Ben Thompson says he no longer feels safe in London after his £7,000 Rolex was ripped from his wrist by a gang of muggers
Mr Thompson and his friend, Roja London founder Roja Dove, were watched leaving Cecconi’s restaurant in Mayfair by a ‘spotter’ before the violent Algerian muggers approached them
This time the disturbing attack was captured on camera, as the Daily Mail revealed earlier this week.
The cases are eerily similar not by chance but because they are part of an alarming new trend in London criminal circles.
As well as making the city of Algiers the place where more stolen phones are resold than anywhere else, Algerian gangs have long made London the phone snatch capital of the world.
But now they have a new scheme: they are increasingly turning from simple phone snatches to more lucrative targeted attacks on the super rich.
When high profile expats like Luisa Zissman complain they no longer feel safe in London so have moved overseas – in her case to Dubai – that they are alluding to these attacks.
It’s thought that what’s driving this pivot by Algerian criminals to more targeted, high reward mugging, may be explained by what’s happened to the crime statistics for phone snatches in England’s capital.
One phone is stolen in London every six to seven minutes. The capital remains the European city most blighted by phone snatches ahead of Madrid, Paris and Barcelona.
And few that are stolen are ever recovered: between 2017 and 2024, out of a total of 587,498 phones stolen in London, excluding the City, just 13,998 were recovered.
And the place they are most likely to end up is… Algeria.
An investigation by the Sunday Times found that 28% of the phones stolen in Britain that can be traced end up in the north African country, making it the number one global destination ahead of China.
But the number of recorded mobile phone thefts in London seems to have finally peaked: in London it fell to 71,391 last year, compared to 81,365 in 2024 – a drop of 12% – Met figures show.
This drop is thought to be explained by two factors.
First the police are getting more adept at catching the snatchers, using technology like drones to identify thieves on e-bikes before they even strike.
And secondly, even more importantly, the victims – the phone-using general public – are becoming much more aware of how at risk they are when visibly using phones in central London.
Their new caution is making it harder for the snatchers to find victims.
This has seen both an increase in surreptitious thefts from people in bars who are distracted while socialising – and the targeting of visibly wealthy people in bars and restaurants for violent mugging once they are out on the street.
The rationale behind this shift appears to be the criminals thinking: ‘Why am I risking prison for stealing a phone that will only earn me £50-100 when I could steal a single watch that would bring in 50 times as much?’
David McKelvey, a former Detective Chief Inspector with the Met Police who now runs his own private detective agency, TM Eye, said that the pivot by Algerian gangs from phone snatches to targeted robberies had been inevitable.
He said: ‘The criminals are able to adapt very quickly and once the police began to have some success in bringing down the number of phone thefts, it was inevitable that they would start looking at other areas.
‘A simple ‘risk vs reward’ assessment means for them it will make sense to try to steal one very valuable watch instead of any numbers of valuable phones.
‘Ultimately the police need to catch these people more quickly and respond to new developments more quickly to do that.’
Many of the phone snatchers themselves are Algerian, with one gang of four alone recently linked with the theft of some 5,000 handsets in a spree worth an estimated £5million.
Zakaria Senadjki, 31, Ahmed Abdelhakim Belhanafi, 25, Nazih Cheraitia, 34, and Riyadh Mamouni, 25, snatched devices from the hands of pedestrians across central London, including many tourists.
Ahmed Abdelhakim Belhanafi, 25, (right) and Nazih Cheraitia, 34, (left) have both been jailed for their part in the phone snatching criminal group
Zakaria Senadjki, 31 (left) and Zakaria Senadjki, 31 (right) have both been jailed for their part in the criminal group
28% of the phones stolen in Britain that can be traced end up in the north African country, making it the number one global destination ahead of China
Pictured: Some of the phones recovered from a raid on an address linked to the group on February 26
Our map shows how gangs of bike thieves like to target the richest areas of central London around Park Lane, Mayfair and Oxford Street
When they could hack into the phones they then emptied bank accounts and even took out loans in their victims names.
The handsets were then moved on to north Africa – with bundles of phones wrapped in tin foil to make them harder to detect while on route.
The hub that connects the phones stolen in central London and that huge market in north Africa is an area popularly known as ‘Little Algiers’ which is centred on Blackstock Road in Finsbury Park, close to the Arsenal stadium in North London.
A generation ago, in the time of the 2005 7/7 London bombings, it was feared the area, which was very close to the Finsbury Park mosque run by fanatic Abu Hamza, might be linked to terrorism – and there were police raids here.
But 20 years on it is a secular rather than religious crime that ‘Little Algiers’ is notorious for: individual stolen phones are frequently taken here immediately after being snatched before being put into bundles for shipment to Algeria.
Over 1,000 phones with an average street value of £300-400 were recovered in a single shipment bound for Algeria from a warehouse near Heathrow last year.
Police also arrested a ‘mule’ who had travelled between London and Algeria more than 200 times in two years to facilitate this trade.
Most of the stolen phones will be destined for El Harrach, a famous market area in a suburb of Algeria’s capital city, Algiers, where dozens of shops and stalls offer phones stolen in London and elsewhere for sale in packaging that presents them as new.
Unlike so many Commonwealth countries, Britain had no colonial era relationship with Algeria – that role was taken by France where around 2 million people of Algerian heritage now live.
And in order to get to the UK, almost everyone travelling illegally does so by boat to Spanish islands.
An increasing number though are thought to now be making the onward journey to Britain by small boat.
All three members of one recently caught Algerian gang – Adam Zawi, Oussama Fadage and Aouidj Abderaouf – are thought to have arrived in the UK this way. And at least one was being housed in a controversial migrant hotel.
The trio were jailed last year after a spree in which they targeted city workers in bars to steal a haul of laptops, tablets and headphones worth £4,000 in just one night.
And although still relatively small, at around 30,000, the number of Algerians in the UK has risen sharply – going up threefold since the turn of the century, with most thought to be in London.
According to most recent Home Office figures there are 190 Algerian criminals in British prisons – all of them men.
But that prison population is rising frequently if judged by the human traffic through the London courts in recent months.
The single most notorious snatch crime said to be committed by an Algerian criminal in London came about because of the victim’s celebrity status and the astonishing fight she put up.
Dramatic footage shows prolific thief Zacariah Boulares creeping up behind Bridgerton actress Genevieve Chenneour and stealing her phone
Genevieve Chenneour (pictured) previously told how she was left ‘concussed and traumatised’ after being robbed at the popular lunch haunt by Algerian national Zacariah Boulares
Bridgerton actor Ms Chenneour was targeted in Joe & The Juice close to the Daily Mail’s offices in Kensington and shared the story with her 15,000 Instagram followers
Zacariah Boulares, 18, (pictured) has pleaded guilty to the robbery on May 29 as well as common assault, and is due to appear at Isleworth Crown Court on June 17
Daily Mail previously obtained footage of Boulares, then 16, appearing to clutch a machete after he ran away from the spot Aled Jones was mugged of a £17K Rolex
Bridgerton actor Genevieve Chenneour was targeted in Joe & The Juice close to the Daily Mail’s offices in Kensington.
CCTV footage from a coffee shop in Kensington this February showed Zacariah Boulares attempt to snatch a phone then react violently when Ms Chenneour bravely challenged him.
It then transpired that he had previously threatened singer and broadcaster Aled Jones with a machete during another robbery in Chelsea.
Boulares was so out of control that his own mother described him as ‘a sociopath’ – but despite both his parents being Algerian and him identifying as the same, it was later established that, as he had been born in London, he was classified as British in crime stats and could not be deported.
Perhaps the single most costly snatch carried out by Algerians was that by Enzo Conticello, 29.
He targeted Rosie Dawson, a brand director of a premium Irish whiskey as she met a friend outside the Dog and Duck pub in Bateman Street, Soho.
But instead of just containing the usual bank cards, her bag also held a Fabergé egg and watch worth £2million – which she was carrying because of a work promotion. The egg has never been recovered.
In the same week, earlier this year, two Algerian gangs were jailed for snatches in busy bars – done by stealth rather than surprise, as street phone snatches involve.
Enzo Conticello (pictured), also known as Hakim Boudjenoune and thought to be from Algeria originally, swiped Rosie Dawson’s handbag on November 7, 2024
Ms Dawson (pictured) had ‘credit cards, a laptop, the Fabergé egg and a Fabergé watch, to the value of over £2.1million’ inside her stolen purse
A file image of a Fabergé egg similar to the one Conticello stole from Ms Dawson
Khaled Behaz, 25, was locked up alongside his Algerian accomplice Yacoub Leulmi after they were caught stealing from victims inside restaurants and pubs in the City.
Meanwhile, Munir Ghilas had robbed 16 different City workers at bars around London, stealing £31,000 worth of phones, laptops and MacBooks in just seven weeks. After he was finally arrested he was given bail and simply carried on stealing. He was eventually jailed for 18 months.
The Daily Mail revealed last week how BBC presenter Mr Thompson has said he no longer feels safe in London after his prized £7,000 Rolex was ripped from his wrist by a gang of violent robbers.
The 45-year-old presenter had been dining out in a fashionable Mayfair restaurant with friend Roja Dove, 69, the founder of fragrance house Roja London, and they were on their way home when they were attacked.
Mr Thompson said he remained shocked by the ‘brazen entitlement’ and ‘hatred’ of the robbers and recalled that they were so menacing that he felt helpless to help his older friend even though he is 6ft 6ins tall and fit.
‘After this attack my behaviour has changed – I no longer feel safe in London,’ he said in a victim impact statement read out as two of the gang appeared in court this week.
‘I am nervous and jumpy when I hear a jogger or cyclist approaching behind me,’ said Mr Thompson, who now tries to avoid walking around the city.
More and more people in London are becoming acquainted with these feelings.
Former detective Mr McKelvey, who was himself the target of a failed attempted phone grab just off Oxford Street, added: ‘Tens of thousands of people have now had the horrible experience of having their phone ripped out of their hand by someone on a bike or in a crowd. It’s shocking and causes lasting trauma.
‘But if anything these new muggings are much worse for the victims because of the violence involved and the fact that the items stolen are often of immense sentimental as well as financial value.
‘The Met needs to get on top of this quickly and make central London safer to go out in.’
In a post to her Instagram account late last night, Amir Khan’s wife Makhdoom claimed the watch was stolen and posted its serial number in a bid to try and ‘find out who’s done this’
Footage shows the thieves running up to Khan and mugging him at gunpoint
The single most high profile victim of a snatch in London recently has been Amir Khan who was robbed of a £70,000 Franck Muller Vanguard Chronograph watch in Leytonstone in 2022, though in this case his attackers were not Algerian.
Khan later said: ‘I am now very fearful of going out particularly in London.’
