London Crypto Thieves Are Stealing Phones to Drain Wallets—Often Within Hours

London's streets have turned into a digital hunting ground—thieves snatch phones, crack crypto wallets, and vanish with digital fortunes in hours.

How They Operate

These aren't your average pickpockets. They bypass basic security, exploit weak authentication, and drain assets before victims even notice their phone is gone. No fancy tech—just ruthless efficiency and a deep understanding of crypto vulnerabilities.

The Aftermath

Victims face empty wallets, irreversible transactions, and the cold reality of decentralized finance—where 'your keys, your crypto' also means 'your loss, your problem'.

Stay sharp, upgrade your security, and maybe—just maybe—don't carry your life savings in a device that fits in a back pocket. After all, traditional banks might have their flaws, but at least they don't vanish in a puff of private key smoke.

Thieves drain crypto wallets while police fall behind

“It felt completely out of my control,” Christian said, adding that the theft made him question whether he should even keep doing his charity work. But his case wasn’t special. These kinds of thefts are happening more and more across London, and the cops can’t keep up.

Most people store almost every detail of their identity on their phones; passport photos, passwords, and two-factor codes. One moment of distraction on the street and a thief has your phone, your crypto, your life.

Scott Pounder, a guy who used to work for the Met Police, now he works at Token Recovery, helping people who’ve had their crypto stolen. He said robbers are aggressively betting on the odds that the average young guy out late in London probably owns crypto.

And according to their data, one in four people between 18 and 34 in the UK own some crypto. Men are three times more likely than women to have it. That’s who these thieves are watching.

Neil Kotak, another victim, said he was also walking home after a night out when a group of men stopped him. “They seemed pretty friendly, we were just talking,” he said.

One of them asked for his number. “I logged in. At that point, they just grabbed my phone.” He lost £10,000 from his Coinbase and Binance accounts. His bank accounts were untouched.

Neil tried to disable the phone using a friend’s device, but he couldn’t remember his Apple ID. By the time he figured it out, his crypto was already being drained. Same with Christian, who said the robbers managed to reset his entire Apple ID.

“I don’t know how they worked around this,” he said. And he’s no beginner. He used to promote a crypto platform based in Singapore and had biometric security set up for every transaction.

Victims get refunds but cops make no progress

Surprisingly, Neil and another victim, Alec Burns, were reimbursed by Coinbase without any explanation. Coinbase pointed to its terms and said they aren’t liable for lost credentials.

But that’s all they said. Neil’s stolen Binance funds haven’t been returned. He said he hasn’t heard anything back from the exchange.

Phil Ariss, who used to work for the City of London Police and now works at blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, said the idea that stolen crypto can’t be tracked is just false. “When they do investigate [crypto theft], they investigate it exceptionally well,” he said. TRM sells software that helps police trace blockchain activity.

But most of the time, no one investigates at all. Phil said criminals usually cash out quickly through physical exchanges. And at the high end, there are ways to hide the money. He pointed to the $1.5 billion stolen by North Korean hackers from a Dubai-based exchange. A chunk of that has already been cashed out.

Back in London, Alec says the cops haven’t done a thing. He lost around $40,000 in crypto. He said the wallets used to MOVE his stolen funds are linked to known entities. But that didn’t help.

“After all that’s happened, I can understand why so many people move to places like Dubai,” Alec said on his podcast, Untangling Web3, adding that he thinks the robbers are either waiting for better ways to move the crypto or for him to stop watching. “In 10 years, I probably won’t be watching that account,” he said.

Scott, the ex-cop, said he’s reported 20 crypto thefts to Action Fraud, the UK’s official reporting center for cybercrime. None of the cases were picked up by the police.

Met Police put out general advice: enable anti-theft features on phones, use strong passwords for every app, and always keep an eye on your screen in public. TRM Labs runs chainabuse.com, where people can report stolen crypto so it can be flagged and possibly blocked from being cashed out.

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