OXFORD, United Kingdom—While the theft of cell phones has attracted widespread news coverage in the United Kingdom, a new study is expected to suggest that many of these reports of cell-phone robbery are in fact false, but are then used to instigate fraudulent insurance claims. Regardless, the U.K. government aims to punish those involved in reprogramming stolen phones with jail sentences of five years.
The new report, which was commissioned by the Mobile Phone Industry Crime Action Forum (MPICAF), maintained that at least 20 percent of reported mobile thefts are actually faked. The forum said that these findings came soon after the U.K. government announced new measures to tackle cell-phone-related crime, provoked by the 700,000 reported stolen last year.
The new legislation, which is designed to sharply cut cell phone-related crime, now said to represent about 50 percent of all street robberies in London, will give mobile operators the tools to bar stolen phones across all networks. The United Kingdom said it is continuing to push cell-phone makers to comply with the European standards that required them to make phones with IMEI numbers that cannot be changed.
The Mobile Telephones (Re-programming) Bill would make it illegal to change a phone’s IMEI number—a 15-digit serial number unique to each cell phone—or to even possess equipment capable of changing the number. A maximum penalty would include five years in prison, an unlimited fine, or both.
