In the rare occurrence that police actually looked into the case of a woman who had her phone stolen in London, it turned into the crumbs on a bread crumb trail which led to a huge organized crime effort.

The sirens quiet now, and the London Met. Area Police report that approximately 40% of all smartphones and other devices stolen in London were being shipped overseas by the same group of thieves that stole the woman’s phone.

Mobile phone snatching has become a huge problem in London of late, with some 80,000 such thefts occurring last year, many in popular areas such as Westminster and the West End.

The police have often received criticism for not doing enough either to prevent crime or attempt to recover stolen devices. But on the off chance that they did—when a woman provided the exact location of her iPhone through the Find My iPhone app—it led inspectors to a package filled with over 800 phones.

“It was actually on Christmas Eve and a victim electronically tracked their stolen iPhone to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport,” Detective Inspector Mark Gavin told the BBC, which was given access to much of the investigation materials. “The security there was eager to help out and they found the phone was in a box, among another 894 phones.”

Using forensics on the package, the police then managed to ID the thieves, and catch them with plain clothes officers who blocked in the thieves’ car. The men, both in their 30s, were arrested on suspicion to conceal criminal property and conspiring to receive stolen goods. Inside their car were more than a dozen mobile phones, some wrapped in aluminum foil—a method that helps block the Find My iPhone feature.

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Next came some 28 raids on properties linked to the first two suspects, and a third suspect who has been arrested. Then, another 15 arrests were made, and another 30 devices recovered. All but one of those 15 were women.

The police gathered information that suggested street thieves would receive some $345 for the theft of an iPhone, which could sell for over $4,000 in China—the destination for most of these stolen phones—where their being internet-enabled presents as extremely valuable for bypassing censorship.

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“Finding the original shipment of phones was the starting point for an investigation that uncovered an international smuggling gang, which we believe could be responsible for exporting up to 40% of all the phones stolen in London”.

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