The jailing of Algerian watch thieves has exposed a crime network operating from North Africa to the UK to carry out a wave of lucrative robberies
The photo of the Patek Philippe Nautilus that popped up on Salem Belckacem’s phone was the signal the Algerian leader of a watch-robber gang needed.
Leaping on his moped, with an accomplice on the back, he raced to the Cube, a Japanese restaurant in Mayfair, an upmarket area of central London, where his unsuspecting victim was dining alfresco.
Diner Alexandre Boudoin’s £65,000 ($82,000) watch was in plain sight as he stretched out his arm on the sunlit open-air restaurant patio.
Belckacem had been alerted by his spotter, Mehdi Zouhri, who with another gang member had been discretely taking photos as they staked out the area for a glimpse of a watch the gang knew could net them thousands.
Arriving at speed, Belckacem’s passenger jumped off the back of the moped and grabbed Mr Boudoin’s right wrist, ripping the watch “clean off”.
With Zouhri and another gang member “running interference” so no one could give chase, the watch was spirited through the backstreets of London and has not been seen since. The chances are that it’ is in the hands of an unwitting new owner.
A shaken Mr Boudoin told the trial of the gang members who robbed that him: “This experience has made me feel extremely unlucky. I don’t feel differently about London but I will have to be a lot more careful going forward. The way I feel about the people who did this? I have a lot of resentment.”
Using background details provided by London’s Met Police about the Algerian-led gang, court documents and coverage of their trial, as well as speaking to experts, media has been able to piece together how they went about their work and how the booming market in stolen watches drew them to the streets of London.
That robbery last April followed the same modus operandi as a string of crimes that 30-year-old Belckacem and his gang of two fellow Algerians and a Libyan pulled off before their luck ran out.
The Met finally caught up with them and in doing so shed light on the organised gang of international thieves who travelled from north Africa, through France and into the UK where there are plentiful targets on the streets of Knightsbridge, Mayfair and Soho.
There have been so many robberies that some international business executives have voiced concerns about visiting even the most high-end parts of London for fear their expensive watches will be stolen.
The “Rolex Ripper” crime wave has seen the number of stolen watches nearly double in England and Wales between 2015 and 2022, to 11,035, according to figures from Watchfinder UK.
London is the epicentre. The stolen watch database shows that last year there was a 56 per cent surge in thefts in the UK capital, with 6,000 watches stolen.
The Met Police has been dedicating resources to fighting watch crime and this year revealed details of an operation in which undercover officers wearing luxury watches late at night in central London were used as bait to lure robbers before their colleagues moved in to make arrests.
London is not the only city that has experienced watch robberies carried about by gangs, led by Algerians and other North Africans who have travelled for the purpose.
A European law enforcement source told media that police were “aware of the phenomenon” but were wary of ascribing crimes to a particular nationality, as many criminals acquired local identities and European gangs are also involved in such crimes.
Belckacem is serving a seven-year prison sentence for robbery along with Nassem Naele, 31, while Mohamed Amir, 32, and 29-year-old Libyan Mehdi Zouhri were both jailed for six years. Also part of the gang was Oussama Kanouni, 27, who was jailed for a year and four months for possessing fake identity documents.
The Met Police says the robberies were the “work of a highly organised and professional gang of robbery suspects and the offences were incredibly traumatic for the victims”.
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