ARMED with knives and prepared for violence, a terrifying new breed of organised criminal is cashing in by seizing Christmas packages in brazen road raids across Britain.
With thousands of parcels set to be delivered to UK doorsteps over the next week, underworld insiders reveal how Brits’ stolen presents are being ruthlessly seized with shockingly sophisticated tactics – and the astonishing places your gifts can end up.
As more people than ever shop online, a package is stolen every seven seconds in the UK, with the crime costing £650million a year – putting drivers at risk of violent attacks and even death.
While many are simply opportunist thieves who boldly steal from doorsteps, police have warned that organised crime gangs are increasingly getting in on the lucrative racket using underhand methods.
Getting tip-offs from distribution centre insiders, these ‘parcel pirate’ thugs gather intel about when valuable hauls worth thousands of pounds are hitting the road before ruthlessly striking.
In a Channel 4 Dispatches show airing tonight, reporter Tir Dhondy examines the alarming trend – meeting the criminals behind the phenomenon and setting traps to snare doorstep thieves.
Tir tells The Sun how she was left shocked by the sheer audacity of the raiders, who use getaway cars with false number plates to hijack vans.
She said: “I always had this preconceived idea that parcel theft was people robbing from doorsteps, something more opportunistic.
“But I learned that this is very much transitioning into organised crime, and the tactics of these organised criminals are getting a lot more sophisticated.
“The scale of the crime, and the fact that people are increasingly using violence or weapons, that’s what really shocked me.”
With thousands of packages out for delivery every day in the run-up to Christmas, delivery drivers face being threatened for their vans.
In March this year, a thief who dragged an Amazon driver half a mile to his death in a stolen van was jailed for life.
Claudiu-Carol Kondor, 42, tried to stop Mark Ross, 32, from stealing his livelihood but died after the thug recklessly tried to throw him off by smashing into parked cars at 60mph in Wortley, West Yorks.
Reporter Tir comes face-to-face with a ‘fence’ who handles stolen goods for criminal networks and claims phones and tech get shipped out of Britain in barrels to places like Nigeria.
He tells Tir: “Containers are sent to parts of Africa, that’s where the mark-up is.
“They haven’t got these items over there, it’s like gold dust.”
He said he could make between £2,000 and £10,000 a barrel depending on what’s inside – and claimed parcel firm insiders were complicit in large-scale thefts.
“They (customers) are doing a lot of recorded delivery nowadays so the inside work has got to happen,” he said. “From what I’ve heard, you’ve gotta have links inside the companies.
“They get a fee for the items (the drivers) and you’ve got to have a guy on the inside working for the parcel company and he’s willing to give information out about where packages are going, so that the people who want to take them can just, you know, pop up and take them.”
The Dispatches team rigged up seven parcels with high-tech trackers and placed them inside expensive North Face jackets and speakers.
Five were stolen and the team followed the packages to blocks of flats across south and east London.
One ended up at Cash Converters, a second-hand shop and pawnbroker, in the north west of the city. The company told Channel 4 it follows strict guidelines on buying stolen goods – but failed to explain how the stolen speakers ended up in the store.
Met Police Flying Squad boss Laura Hillier shares footage that shows masked men jumping into the back of a DPD van before loading stolen goods into other cars. It’s revealed they will use bogus numberplates before transferring parcels into different vans.
In the past two years, the Flying Squad has busted 20 parcel gangs and made 48 arrests.
DCI Hillier says: “We are seeing a level of sophistication, organisation and gangs getting involved using violence. They’re going in with a precondition that they’re gonna either rob or steal items from the couriers.
“It’s brazen what they do.”
Tir added: “I viewed a lot of CCTV footage, and videos taken by the public, of this criminal gang who were brazenly ransacking these delivery drivers in broad daylight.
“It was just so shocking – the fact that, A), they were doing it in the day, and B) how slick their operation was.
“The fact that there’s a specialist police unit tackling this just shows how prevalent this crime is. Most of my friends have had some parcels stolen at some point. It’s something that happens a lot – and you can expect to see it more in the lead up to Christmas too.”
Violent threats
Tir also speaks to a parcel thief who identifies himself only as J, before showing her his day’s haul. Unfortunately for him, one of the boxes contains a bright pink sex toy.
He admits there are times he has had to “resort” to violence.
Asked if he uses a knife, he says: “I can’t really say too much, (it’s the) element of surprise, you know, when you are violent you can catch people off-guard.
“It’s a lot easier, but at the same time, it’s a lot more commotion because it’s violence. If you can get away with doing something quietly, so be it.”
He adds chillingly: “You do what you can to get the reward. Y’know?
“You’ve got to risk it if you really want to get it.”
One driver told how they are easy targets because they are forced to deliver up to 600 boxes a day in the run-up to Christmas – with pay working out as little as just 45p per box.
Kyle, who once had a van full of parcels nicked, said the pressure to deliver so many gifts meant drivers were under pressure to stop and drop on doorsteps.
He said: “Policy-wise, no delivery company is ever meant to leave a package in an unsafe place, but at the end of the day, the customer wants their item, they paid for their item and, most of the time, aren’t bothered if it’s left (on the doorstep).”
“But with us it’s ‘the faster we get it done the more we get paid’ in a shorter timeframe – otherwise we’d be here all day.”
Tire said: “It’s rich pickings if you’re targeting delivery vans, especially if there are some high value items in there. Shockingly, there have been a few cases where the delivery driver targeted have either been injured or killed, which is so shocking.
“The level of violence used, knives and that sort of thing, that’s something which definitely hit home.
“The other thing is that a lot of these delivery drivers are self-employed. [Kyle] bought his van himself, and he told me how he had his van stolen, which really impacted his livelihood.
“If a parcel gets stolen, it can really impact them, and not a lot of people know that – they assume they can just fall back on the delivery company.”
Hunting Britain’s Parcel Thieves: Dispatches airs on Channel 4 at 8pm tonight and is available to stream.
