The following article from Catalonia offers a fascinating peek into the trade in stolen hand-held devices, most of which end up being sold in the phone shops of North Africa. I had always wondered how thieves could circumvent the unique identifiers found in each phone, and it turns out there is a new layer of Chinese middlemen who know how to disassemble the devices and change their IDs. Clever fellows, those Chinamen!

Note: As usual, when the article refers to “Romanian” criminal gangs, it means gypsies or Roma, but the tenets of political correctness forbid identifying the perpetrators in such a fashion.

Many thanks to Pampasnasturtium for translating this article from the Catalonian daily La Vanguardia:

The profitable black market encourages the theft of mobile phones Every day, in the city of Barcelona alone, more than 330 thefts of mobiles are recorded by Mayka Navarro, Barcelona

February 4, 2019 [Photo caption (not shown): Coveted items: the high price of smartphones has turned them into a preferred booty of thieves.] In the city of Barcelona an average of 450 thefts are recorded (by the police) daily. [Translator’s note: ‘robos al descuido’, being robbed due to not minding your property.] More than half of those thefts take place in the streets of Ciutat Vella. And in 75% of the cases, a telephone is the object sought after by the thief. Long ago criminals realized that it was a lot more profitable to pilfer a mobile than a wallet. And even a lot easier. Tourists use their mobiles every day more as a camera, and the dependence that a high percentage of the population suffers from causes those items, with a value in many cases around a thousand euros, to be carried around in the hand with nonchalance and hardly any precautions. A coveted object always in sight to be checked at any time, or snatched in a few seconds. After the crime, mobile phones begin a dizzying journey that can take them, in a few hours, to be sold in any phone shop of a Moroccan city. The northern African country is the main destination of an immensely high percentage of the devices stolen in Barcelona. It’s curious, because important brands like Apple have no official stores in the neighboring country, but there are dozens of shops in Casablanca or Marrakesh where they’re sold as if they were new. Many users have suffered a theft and afterwards they complain that, when activating the geo-location system of the device, they verify that it is already located on Moroccan territory. Ciutat Vella is the main setting for this type of crime, and the tourists the victims Phones are stolen because there’s a big black market ready to buy them, without asking where they come from. The illegal (stolen phones) reception business results in such minimal penalties that it is impossible to dedicate police resources to investigate a group of criminals who are set free the next day. The Ciutat Vella chiefs of police acknowledge that the streets of the area are, furthermore, the place where all the phones stolen in the rest of the city are gathered. All the people in charge of reception, who take care of giving a second life to hand-held devices, live there. At this time the profile of the mobile thief is largely a Moroccan minor or teenager who has (legally) become an adult [translator’s note: turned 18], and has decided to survive by committing crimes outside of the (publicly-funded) guardianship system. Alone or in a group, he chooses the victims and steals tirelessly. ‘They thieve with great ease because people walk carelessly with mobile in hand. Only if the situation gets complicated, and they detect that it is a high-priced model, will the robbery end up with violence, but that’s in the least number of cases,’ explains an investigations official of Ciutat Vella.