Find My iPhone led to hackers smuggling 40,000 phones into China

We hear good stories from time to time where someone has been able to use Find My iPhone to track a stolen device and successfully recover it, but a new record has been set when a single iPhone was traced to a gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 phones into China.

The iPhone was tracked to an airport warehouse where it was found in a box with 894 other phones, leading to the arrest of 18 suspects and the recovery of more than 2,000 phones…

BBC News reports.

Police say they have broken up an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China last year.

In what the Metropolitan Police say is the UK’s biggest crackdown on phone theft, 18 suspects have been arrested and more than 2,000 stolen devices have been recovered. Police believe the gang may be responsible for exporting up to half of the phones stolen from London, where most mobile phones are seized in the UK.

The story began when an iPhone was stolen and the victim traced it to a warehouse near London’s Heathrow airport. The police first asked the security team at the site to check the area, where the device was found in a box along with 894 other phones.

This led to the interception of another shipment to the same address, and police were able to take DNA from the packages that identified the two suspects. It is possible that the police will then use some combination of known collaborators and covert surveillance to target other properties; what we know for sure is that they raided 28 addresses, where 2,000 devices were found.

The report says that stealing phones is now so profitable that many drug dealers have switched to this crime.

“We hear that some criminals stop selling drugs and move on to the phone business because it is very profitable,” said Police Minister Sarah Jones. “If you steal a phone and it’s worth hundreds of pounds you can understand why criminals who are on the cutting edge and want to exploit new crimes turn to that world.”

Senior officials say the gang is targeting Apple products because of its overseas profits. A Met Police investigation found street thieves were being paid up to £300 per handset – and the force said stolen devices were being sold in China for up to £4,000 each, as long as they were online and more attractive to those trying to evade censorship.

Thieves are often able to steal unlocked items by snatching them from the street where people are using them.

Apple has added a succession of anti-theft features over the years, such as Activation Lock and Stolen Device Protection. It’s not immediately clear how the gang overcame these safeguards, but one possibility is keeping the phones permanently unlocked and unlocked. This will work in this case, considering that the value here is an external device that is not locked down in the same way as local devices, rather than being able to activate it with the user’s Apple ID.

Featured accessories

Image: BBC News