London watch gangs steal £1 million a month from tourists' wrists as Mayfair trio are jailed

Luxury watch thieves are stripping an average of £1 million worth of timepieces a month from the wrists of Londoners and tourists in the West End, with the figures drawn from Metropolitan Police data placed before Southwark Crown Court. Romanian fashion entrepreneur Catalin Botezatu described fearing for his life as three men closed in on him and sliced a £137,000 diamond-encrusted Richard Mille watch from his wrist outside Mayfair restaurant Amazonico in January. Judge Dafna Spiro, passing sentence on the trio, denounced the crimes as 'a shame and a blight on our city' — and observed that Botezatu has been put off returning to London altogether.

Younes Djoudi, 34, got five years and nine months; Abdel El Habchi, 30, five years and six months; Ali Eldahouzze, 22, three and a half years.

A knife was 'seen or intimated' in one in five West End watch robberies across the past six months, with many victims punched and kicked.

Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham together recorded 97 watch robberies in the opening six months of 2026.