Mobile phone shop faces €60k loss as robbers clear out stock in three minutes

The first thing Waqas Khan did when he realised that the family-run mobile phone shop at Park Street in Dundalk had been broken into was to ring his father who is on holiday in Pakistan to tell him the bad news. Next he phoned the Gardai and reported the break-in which happened at 3.30am on Wednesday morning.

He then watched the footage from the shop’s security camera which shows a gang of three men breaking the front door of IFix and calmly filling bags with high end mobile phones, iPads, Apple watches and tablets.

The whole operation took less than five minutes and Waqas believes that the gang, who were wearing masks and gloves, knew exactly what they were looking for and where to find it.

“They took more than 50 phones, iPads, tablets and Apple watches,” he says, standing behind an empty counter. They even stole his own personal iPad as well as the shop’s iPad.

He reckons that the lost stock was worth around €60,000 and says it will take at least a year for them to recover from the loss.

“It’s a very big blow. The shop was only open a relatively short time, nearly three years. The business had been going really well and we had good customers but this is a big set back.”

He says they thought that the shop’s position on a corner on one of Dundalk’s main streets would have been a deterrent against break-ins. The intruders, however, broke open the front door and appeared to know the layout of the shop, taking what they wanted in just three minutes.

“They took top of the range mostly new phones, 15 Pro Max and 14 Pro Max, S24 Ultra and S23 Ultra as well as top range tablets and iPads, and left the cheaper used phones.”

He said that gardai have told him that the CCTV cameras on the traffic lights immediately outside the shop were not turned towards the shop. It appears from the video that the men were speaking in a language other than English.

“I’ve heard that two other mobile phone shops have also been broken into in the last week or so,” he says.