This is the moment four suspected gang members accused of stealing more than £300,000 worth of phones are arrested in an early morning raid.

The group would allegedly befriend drunk or unsuspecting members of the public as they came out of pubs before snatching their phones.

After swiping the devices, the gang would use them to pay for expensive tech like mobile phones as well as steal thousands in cryptocurrency, police said.

A warrant was executed in the early hours of Thursday, and three men aged 21, 19 and 18, from north London, were arrested along with a 31-year-old man from north-west London, police said.

The four men were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit theft and conspiracy to commit fraud between September 2024 and December 2025. 

All four men remain in custody, the force said on Thursday afternoon.

Detective Inspector Kev Hughes, from City of London Police, said: ‘These arrests demonstrate our determination to disrupt and dismantle organised crime groups who think they can profit from stealing people’s phones and accessing their bank accounts.

‘Phone snatching is not a victimless crime. In a matter of minutes, offenders can steal not only a device but someone’s money, personal data and sense of security.

A warrant was executed in the early hours of Thursday, and three men aged 21, 19 and 18, from north London , were arrested along with a 31-year-old man from north-west London, police said

City of London Police officers during a raid at a property in London used by a suspected member of a phone snatching gang

The group would allegedly befriend drunk or unsuspecting members of the public as they came out of pubs before snatching their phones

‘We have already reduced phone snatching by 40 per cent compared to last year, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal – from proactive patrols to complex financial investigations – to drive that figure down even further.

‘We would urge people to turn on advanced anti-theft features on their phones, hide financial apps behind biometrics and always shield your PIN in public.’

City of London Police is offering a service to mark phones so they can be identified and have a better chance of being returned to the victim if they are stolen.

Earlier this month, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley called on the telecoms and tech industry to make it harder for stolen phones to be reused.

He also called on the courts to stop bailing repeat offenders, which he said was ‘undermining the hard work officers are doing to keep communities safe’.

In its ‘largest ever crackdown’ on phone thefts in London, the Met announced earlier this week it has slashed the number of cases by 10,000 in the past year.

The force said on Tuesday that in the last four weeks alone officers have made 248 arrests related to phone theft and seized around 770 stolen devices as part of ‘intensified activity’ across the capital to identify and arrest suspects.

Offences in London have fallen from 81,365 in 2024 to 71,391 last year, representing a 12.3 per cent decline in cases.

Drones, e-bikes and live facial recognition have been used to catch offenders.

The London borough with the most phones stolen in 2024 was Westminster, with 34,039. Camden came second with 10,907, followed by Southwark with 7,316.

There were 116,656 reported mobile thefts in 2024 – the highest number on record – and more than 50 per cent higher than the total in 2017 of just over 77,000.

Last year’s total was equivalent to 13 phones being stolen every hour – and it was 1,300 incidents higher than in the previous 12 months. Despite the number of thefts, only 169 suspects were charged in the year, and seven were let off with a caution.

The figures, obtained from the Met under freedom of information laws by campaign group Crush Crime, also showed a further 8,588 handset thefts in January this year.

Some 61,000 of victims were female and just under 48,000 were male, with the rest not recorded. From 2017 to 2024 the total number of mobile phones reported stolen was almost 684,000 – and they were estimated to have a value of £365million.

The number of phone thefts climbed to 91,000 in 2019 but dipped during lockdowns. It then went on to exceed the pre-Covid total in 2023, with just over 115,000 thefts.