Mobile phones and tablets snatched on the streets of Britain by moped gangs are sold for millions of naira in Computer Village, Lagos, The Sun of UK has reported.
Such gadgets are referred to as ‘UK used’.
Stolen by criminals on small motorcycles, the phones are first stripped of their data which is used by gangs to try and hack bank accounts.
They are then sold on in bulk to middlemen who ship them to Eastern Europe where technology experts working for criminal gangs steal users’ private information, the report said.
The phones are then finally sold to crime lords in Nigeria, as well as Algeria and India.
Nigeria has not signed up to a global deal effectively blacklisting stolen phones so UK gangs are continuing to supply tens of thousands of phones sold at knockdown prices.
Conservative MP Andrew Percy told the newspaper: “It is truly shocking to think that violent attacks here in the UK are being used to make black marketers in other parts of the world wealthy.”
A Lagos police spokesman, however, said: “I am not aware that stolen phones from the UK end up in Lagos.
“If there is a complaint about a stolen phone in Lagos we shall investigate it.”
In 2016 there were 446,000 UK phone thefts. In London alone there were 60,000 mobile thefts and robberies, almost two-thirds of them iPhones.
In the 12 months to June 2017, Scotland Yard recorded 16,158 phone crimes related to mopeds, more than three times those reported in the year to June 2016.
Many phones are stolen by ruthless moped gangs who use acid, swords and baseball bats to rob pedestrians.
There were more than 23,000 motorcycle crimes in London last year – an average of 63 a day.
In November, the Met unveiled new lighter, faster motorcycles that officers will use to pursue the gangs on mopeds.
