Their Phones Were Stolen in London. Then the Threats Started.

The crime Alex Pikula reported to the police was one they had heard before: An e-bike rider had zoomed past as Mr. Pikula left a theater in London’s West End, ripping his phone from his hands.

It was frustrating, Mr. Pikula thought, but that was that.

He was wrong.

His mother soon started receiving strange texts, claiming to have her son’s emails and bank information. Then she received a video of a man brandishing a gun. Then came threats of sexual assault and death.

“I know who you are and where you live,” read one, full of obscenities and typos. “I’ve killed or far less than a phone before,” it went on. “We will see if you value your life over this phone.”

All of the messages wanted her to do one thing: unlink her son’s Apple ID from his stolen phone.

Mr. Pikula knew the chances that the police would recover his phone were slim.

A record 81,000 phones were reported stolen in London in 2024, the year Mr. Pikula, 37, was visiting from Chicago. Even though that number fell to about 71,000 last year, the scourge of thefts — and the police’s struggle to stop it — has made both residents and tourists uneasy.

Last year, London’s main police force, the Metropolitan Police, started focusing more on international networks that ship stolen phones to China, where the devices are sold on the black market.

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