Pickpockets Stole Mobile Phones

Who says pickpocketing is a petty crime?

A gang of 11 thieves was just sentenced in London. These pickpockets stole mobile phones on the London Tube and supposedly made about $15,000 a day. Police recovered £143,000 but credit the gang with making more than five million pounds through stealing phones. Let me do the math for you: that’s more than seven million dollars. Is that petty?

These thieves belong to a criminal network and systematically steal mobile phones from Tube passengers. It’s not a one-off crime. The British Transport Police Chief Superintendent Paul Brogden calls this an “industrial-scale criminal operation.” Can it possibly be considered petty?

More than a thousand mobile phones were seized with a large quantity of cash.

British Transport Police press release.

You can tell that term really irks me. The entire premise that pickpocketing is a petty crime irks me. How much evidence do we need?

You’d think I’d be used to this kind of report, after 22 years of pickpocket research.

These characters were all sentenced to two to three years; head thief Nawid Moshfiq got a little more time. What will they serve, half? Less? Then what? Will they go back to work in London? Maybe, or they’ll move on to another city where the police don’t know them.