Afghan asylum seeker who masterminded £181m phone smuggling ring jailed for nearly TEN YEARS

From the Newshound archive · first published 25 September 2026 · last updated 26 September 2026.

Amir Khadikhel, 35, an Afghan asylum seeker, has been sentenced to nine and a half years at Southwark Crown Court for running Britain's largest stolen mobile phone smuggling network, shipping over 62,000 stolen iPhones to China and Dubai via DHL and UPS. His gang was responsible for roughly 40 per cent of all phones stolen in London at their peak, with street thieves receiving up to £300 per handset and devices fetching as much as $5,000 in China. Khadikhel's two accomplices, Ismat Miakhel and Mansoor Mohammed, received nine years and six and a half years respectively. Judge Adam Hiddleston called the offending 'enormous scale financially' and the criminality 'highly organised and sophisticated.'

The operation shipped stolen iPhones — worth £181 million in total — twice a week, hidden in tin-foil-lined boxes routed through Heathrow.

Investigators recovered in excess of 5,000 handsets valued at £5.5 million, the inquiry having been sparked when a theft victim traced their own phone to a DHL warehouse.

The gang sent devices to the same Hong Kong high-rise block previously infiltrated by reporters investigating London's phone-theft epidemic.