A man captured the moment balaclava-clad thieves on e-bikes tried snatching his phone as he filmed a Lamborghini supercar in central London.
The footage, posted on TikTok, shows passersby stopping to admire and photograph a green Lamborghini Revuelto, parked up in busy New Bond Street.
Two e-bike riders can be seen approaching at speed along the road. Narrowly avoiding pedestrians, they are dressed all in black with black balaclavas covering their faces.
One then attempts to snatch the phone that is capturing the footage from the man’s hand, with the phone tumbling as it continues film.
It is thought the man managed to hold onto his phone, with the bikers speeding away empty-handed.
The video was posted on TikTok with the caption “POV: you are in central London”, and has received nearly 160,000 likes.
Users responded in outrage, with one branding the would-be thieves “cowards”.
Others expressed alarm at their brazen behaviour, attempting theft in broad daylight in a busy street.
“Doesn’t London have any police officers?” one TikTok user wrote.
“How are they cruising so freely and undisturbed on the streets? That’s crazy,” wrote another.
It came the Government pledged earlier this month to crack down on phone thefts after the number of incidents soared by more than 150 per cent last year.
An estimated 78,000 people had phones or bags snatched from them on British streets in year to March 2024, according to data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
This represented a 153 per cent rise when compared to the 31,000 incidents of “snatch thefts” in the same period to March 2023.
According to Home Office analysis of the data, there were more than 200 incidents every day across England and Wales in the last 12 months.
Just 0.8 per cent of “theft from the person” resulted in a charge, and 81.9 per cent of police investigations were closed before a suspect was found.
Police intelligence shows this is likely being driven by increased demand for second-hand smartphones, both in the UK and abroad.
In a bid to tackle this soaring criminal activity, the Home Office has said it will call tech companies and manufacturers to a summit which would look at “the new innovations that could take on the illegal market”.
