When one Londoner had her phone snatched out of her hand she didn’t give up hope of finding it.
Agiimaa Oyungerel, 35, who had her Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra stolen outside Surrey Quays train station by a man on a bike on Saturday, December 20.
Ms Oyungerel had little hope of recovering of her phone – which could set you back as much as £1,336.
But the 35-year-old found her device, and four others, stashed under a tree in Pepys Park in Lewisham, southeast London, after using Google’s Find My Device tracking service.
Ms Oyungerel said: ‘I don’t know why the thief made such a rookie mistake.
‘Maybe he doesn’t have that much experience. I can’t believe my luck.’
The journalist, content creator and translator had been visiting London from Mongolia to see her husband.
She was on her way to a car boot sale when her phone was snatched from her hand.
Ms Oyungerel said she tried to chase the offender but was ‘no match’ as he careered away on a bicycle.
A frantic search ensued before workers at the nearby HNT Pawnbrokers shop told her someone else had their phone stolen in the exact same manner just moments before.
Two hours later – after finding the location of her phone using Google’s Find My Device service – she rushed to the park.
Ms Oyungerel said: ‘I kneeled on all fours digging through dirt and leaves and branches.
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‘Something hard touched my hand and I found my phone and four other phones. They were all iPhones except mine.
‘In the meantime, I called the police and told them I reported the crime two hours ago and offered them the phones.
‘I took them to the station by myself but I was also worried that I might be targeted by the thieves.
‘I don’t feel really safe because the police didn’t take the perpetrator so he’s still in the area.
‘I don’t feel like going out on my own.’
She added: ‘I hope the police did their job and the people got their phones back.’
It comes after reports in recent months that phone thieves have begun hiding devices in the dirt of Phoenix Garden, off Shaftesbury Avenue in Covent Garden – waiting for the risk of being caught to pass.
In November, volunteers at the garden had unearthed phones in the bushes and flowerbeds.
The devices they found were either reunited with their owners or handed in to police.
BBC News reported that Louise Gates, Phoenix Garden manager, often found phones ‘thrown over the fence from the night before’ when she unlocked the garden the following morning.
Ms Gates said: ‘Some of our volunteers have dug up phones wrapped in tinfoil.’
Tinfoil can prevent a device’s location from being tracked.
And in October, Phoenix Garden had doubled up as a storage facility for the phones stolen across the capital, according to London Centric.
The publication reported that thieves were burying devices an inch down in the dirt before coming to collect them the following day.
The phones are then shipped abroad to countries such as Algeria or China.
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson told Metro: ‘Local officers have stepped up patrols in the area to identify potential offenders.
‘We’re also dismantling organised crime groups suspected of large-scale phone theft.
‘By intensifying our efforts we’re catching more perpetrators and protecting people from having their phone stolen in the capital and have reduced theft by 16% since April.
‘We need help from partners and industry to do more and we are asking phone makers such as Apple and Samsung to make security improvements to make stolen phones harder to sell.’
In November, the Met carried out what the force said was its largest-ever operation against phone theft, dismantling an organised crime group suspected of large-scale phone theft and smuggling.
More than 3,000 stolen phones were recovered and 46 arrests were made.
The Met said it believes the group was responsible for exporting up to 40,000 devices to China.
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