I've become a victim of a London phone snatcher - except the thief wasn't balaclava-clad and on a bike... he was well dressed, perfectly groomed and targeted me in a pub
When I arrived in London, phone theft was something I thought of as urban folklore - the kind of grim anecdote you hear, shake your head at and file away under 'thankfully not me'. Without bumping into me, without drawing attention, without me feeling a thing - he removed my phone from my pocket. Within a flash, I became one of London's thousands of phone theft victims. In 2019, 91,481 phone thefts were reported to the police, before numbers fell to 55,820 in 2020 during pandemic restrictions. Indeed, phone theft is not just about losing an object.
Source: Daily Mail March 23, 2026 13:33 UTC
