LONDON—About 23,000 high-end Samsung A300 mobile phones valued at approximately US$6 million disappeared from a warehouse in West London this week.
Police believe the handsets were stolen by thieves with inside information on the warehouse and will likely end up on the black market. But the phones did not include Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM) cards and have been deactivated through international serial numbers programmed into each handset, so “they will be worthless unless they are reprogrammed illegally,” according to Detective Inspector Morgan O’Grady, who is heading up the inquiry.
Samsung is offering more than US$286,000 as a reward for information on the theft.
The news followed earlier announcements that U.K. mobile operators Vodafone and BT Cellnet put in place new measures to prevent wireless phone theft. The operators said they will upgrade their networks to block a stolen handset’s calls.
The two largest U.K. operators have been under pressure from the government and consumers to take these measures, which other U.K. service providers already offer. Other operators block a handset’s serial number once it has been reported stolen, making it harder for criminals to reactivate stolen phones just by changing the SIM cards.
However, the operators have said that blocking serial numbers is insufficient to stop the high number of mobile-phone thefts in the United Kingdom. The U.K. government is expected to outlaw tampering with mobile-phone security codes as well, the Financial Times reported.
