The Great Mobile Phone Robbery
Print storySamsung handsets worth £4.2m stolen
Posted in Business, 12th February 2002 16:15 GMT
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Thieves have made off with 26,000 Samsung mobile phones after an audacious raid on a warehouse on the outskirts of London.
The A300 phones, worth an estimated £4.2 million, were stolen from a freight forwarding warehouse in Hayes, Middlesex, where the alarm system was turned off, prompting speculation that the raid may have been an inside job.
Following the theft, the phones (which were marked with Orange or One2One logos) have been deactivated. None of the phones had a SIM card inside them and were rendered inoperable using international serial numbers programmed into each handset.
However there are still concerns that the phones might be reprogrammed by the gang and sold overseas, or on the black market here.
Samsung is offering a £200,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the mobiles.
The theft took place at around 18:40 last Sunday, that day before Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens unveiled a crackdown on mobile phone theft. ®
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