Trail of London’s ‘Rolex Ripper’ gangs leads to North Africa
▶ The jailing of luxury watch robbers exposed a network stretching from North Africa to the UK, report Tariq Tahir and Azzeddine Bensouiah
A months-long investigation has laid bare the extent of London’s “Rolex Ripper” gangs ahead of a summer tourist season in which thousands of visitors could become targets.
The National followed a criminal trail from Algeria where young men are enticed by organised crime to steal luxury watches in Europe, including in London, Paris and Majorca. “Mafias formed by third-generation immigrants in France are very well organised and can easily enter and leave England or any European country,” a retired police officer in Kouba, a neighbourhood in Algeria’s capital Algiers, said.
“They often use young immigrants from Algeria who find themselves in a desperate situation as battering rams to commit their crimes.”
In London, networks of street spotters, security doormen and waiters help robbers identify customers wearing luxury watches, before they are snatched – often violently.
A surge in demand for luxury watches in the second-hand market is one factor behind the 6,000 reported timepiece thefts in London last year – a 56 per cent rise on 2022.
The jailing of an Algerian-led gang after a trial in London in December revealed the knowledge and modus operandi of the group and others like it. “They are well-armed knowledge-wise and can tell the difference between a watch that is semi-valuable and highly valuable,” said Paul Thorpe, a retired watch dealer and an authority on luxury watch crime,
“They know about the desirable models, their approximate value on the genuine market and black market.
“So, they know what they’re looking at. They’re not stupid.”
Mr Thorpe said gangs are often between 10 or 20 strong and tend to include women to interact with and distract male victims.
He said waiters are a vital source of tip-offs.
“She’s serving people and then going out the back and WhatsApping her friends saying, ‘there’s a guy with a yellow shirt on and he’s wearing a Rolex, I’ll let you know when he’s leaving’. And they will be waiting for him,” said Mr Thorpe.
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 Baudoin’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 discreetly 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 Baudoin’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.
“This experience has made me feel extremely unlucky,” Mr Baudoin told the December trial of gang members at Southwark Crown Court.
“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, The National has been able to piece together how they went about their work and how the booming market in stolen watches drew them to London.
Luck ran out
That robbery last April followed the same modus operandi as a string of crimes that 30-year-old Belckacem and his gang of fellow Algerians and Libyan Zouhri 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 plenty targets in 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 centre. The stolen watch database shows that last year there was a 56 per cent surge in thefts there – with 6,000 watches stolen.
The Metropolitan Police has been dedicating resources to fighting watch crime and this year revealed details of an operation. 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 The National 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.
The gang … and the victims
Belckacem is serving a seven-year jail sentence for robbery, along with Nassem Naele, 31, while Mohamed Amir, 32, and 29-year-old 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 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”.
Another victim was James Dreyfous, who was robbed after he left Bonds restaurant in Mayfair with three women. A moped, again ridden by Belckacem, pulled up and his £65,000 watch was taken by an unidentified male riding pillion.
Wang Weiyu was shopping with his wife and daughter on Bond Street last May when he was robbed of his £100,000
Patek Philippe watch. Amir followed Mr Wang, taking photos of his watch, before Naele pushed Mr Wang’s wife.
The tourist was trying to help his wife up with his right hand when Naele took the opportunity of that distraction to grab Mr Wang’s left wrist and pulled hard enough to break the band to snatch the watch.
Maria Malysheva was robbed of her watch worth tens of thousands of pounds near Canary Wharf station when Belckacem grabbed her in a bear hug which allowed Zouhri to forcibly take the watch off her wrist. Belckacem then threw his victim to the ground.
The Met Police say the gang’s crime spree began to unravel when officers found CCTV footage of Belckacem and another other man arriving on a moped shortly after a robbery, parking it and then running to a taxi stopped nearby.
The moped was recovered and Belckacem’s fingerprints were identified from a crash helmet found under the locked seat. He later reported the moped as stolen, for which he was convicted of perverting the course of justice.
While the police would not be drawn on where Belckacem’s learnt his trade, it is clear he is an experienced criminal.
As part of their investigation, police raided a property in west London, where officers found Naele and Kanouni, who were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit robbery. The team then tracked down Amir and Zouhri, who were arrested and charged.
When in London, the gang lived at low-key addresses. When The National visited the small social housing apartment where Belckacem lived, his neighbour said she had seen him “maybe two or three times” before one day “the place was full of police vans with flashing lights”.
French connection
According to the Met, some of the suspects had attempted to evade the authorities through the use of fake names and fraudulent documents. Extensive work was needed to establish their real names.
Amir originally claimed to be Mohamed Bougherraf before his true identity was revealed.
Court papers reveal Naele had a French driving licence in the name of Nassim Naili, while Kanouni had French ID cards in the name of Oussama Nafaa and Mathieu Arenas.
The use of fake French IDs suggests at least some members of the gang moved across Europe to London.
It is not known when the gang arrived in the UK, but moving across borders to carry out violent robberies is a pattern established by Algerian watch robbers in France.
Kouba neighbourhood
Police in Paris recently dismantled a gang of watch Algerian watch robbers, who went after timepieces worth €60,000 to €80,000 ($65,000 to $86,000) in upmarket areas.
Investigators found the thieves came from the Kouba neighbourhood in Algiers, and came in waves using fake IDs, lured by the chance of making several thousand euros in a few minutes. During their threeweek stay in Paris, they stayed in apartments or squats in the suburbs, police believe.
Operating in teams of two or three, spotters would lurk near the exits of high-end restaurants waiting for a victim wearing a luxury watch to emerge, then signal for the rest of the gang to arrive and take the watch with extreme violence.
In other instances, they would roam the streets on mopeds looking for victims. One trick was to knock a car’s wing mirror out of place and when the driver leaned a hand out to fix it, their watch would be whipped off.
After staying for a few weeks and making enough money from their robberies, they would leave. London was reportedly one destination, as well as Barcelona, Austria and Switzerland – with Kouba used as a safe haven.
It appears they also shared the same detailed knowledge of watches possessed by their countrymen who operated in London. Police believe they were able to spot luxury brands such Patek Philippe, Hublot or Audemars Piguet and knew the value of the items they stole “to the nearest euro”.
Mirroring the tactics of their Met counterparts, Paris police also set up a dedicated team to tackle the gangs of young men, whose tactics have been described “refined”.
The gang’s spree came to an end when they targeted a restaurant owner for his €250,000 Patek Philippe but police, who had them under surveillance, pounced.
Lured by criminal gangs
About 90 per cent of watch crime is committed by people who don’t live in London or have come to the city very recently PAUL THORPE
Retired watch dealer
In Kouba itself, it comes as no surprise that young men have been caught up in crime after leaving the area.
More and more of them, many of whom lack qualifications, have become a prime target for organised crime networks, who exploit them for drug trading, street robberies and even human trafficking, according to a retired police officer. It is a problem not only in Algeria but also neighbouring Tunisia, which also has historic ties to France.
“How can we explain how young people with no history, no criminal record and whose parents are well-off and respected, take the path of exile and a few months later we learn that they are in prison?” he told The National.
“It’s the mafia networks that use them, taking advantage of their precariousness. You just have to break them and then ask them to do anything.”
The theft of luxury items is more prevalent among the diaspora established in
France, often orchestrated by well-organised crime groups, the retired officer said.
“Mafias formed by third-generation immigrants in France are very well-organised and can easily enter and leave England or any European country,” he said. “They often use young immigrants from Algeria, who find themselves in a desperate situation, as battering rams to commit their crimes, especially those who have left in the last two years. They are willing to do anything, as long as they are promised money in return.”
In Smain, a neighbourhood cafe, friends of two waiters who recently left for London say they chat about their trip over the phone with them and hope to join them soon.
“Here, going to England is a culture – a kind of spell cast on young people,” said Merouane Kadach, who emigrated to England with two brothers but returned to take care of his elderly parents. “After all, there is not a family in the neighbourhood that does not have among its own at least one or two immigrants in England.” luxury watches. “I would say 90 per cent of watch crime is committed by people who don’t live here [in London] on a permanent basis or have come very recently,” he told The National.
Far from being simple thugs who will target anyone who looks rich, they know what they’re looking for.
“They are well-armed knowledge-wise and can tell the difference between a watch that is semi-valuable and highly valuable,” he said.
“They know about the desirable models, their approximate value on the genuine market and black market. So, they know what they’re looking at. They’re not stupid.”
Mr Thorpe explained that gangs are between 10 or 20 strong and many will have women who interact with victims to distract them.
“They will certainly be out spotting and they’ve infiltrated security firms to have doormen looking out for victims,” he said. Waiters in restaurants have also been recruited by gangs and if they are from outside the UK, they will often be of the same nationality. back to the 2011, when Rolex ceased its lost and stolen register, Mr Thorpe said.
He asked: “[If the authorities took away] the ability for the police to tell if a car was stolen, would car crime go up or would it go down?”
A guy named Vinnie
The market in pre-owned luxury watches is booming, as collectors are seduced by their beauty and fine craftsmanship and with prices seemingly always heading up, they are of course a sound investment.
According to consultants Deloitte, the watch market is likely to grow to $40 billion by 2030, by which time it will comprise more than half of the primary market. The market is being driven by buyers from the Millennial and Gen Z generations, who are more comfortable with buying second-hand items online and are looking for cheaper prices, its report says.
Christopher Marinello, who hunts stolen luxury watches on behalf of wealthy clients, explains that the waiting list for new timepieces is also fuelanything from a guy named Vinnie, let alone a $400,000 watch without papers.”
He said luxury watch shops in big cities such as London and Paris are there for marketing rather than selling.
“There’s a backlog of a couple of years before you get your watch,” said Mr Marinello, the founder and chief executive of Art Recovery International.
“Wealthy people from all around the world, including the Middle East, like to jump into a shop and drive away with a Ferrari or walk away with their wristwatch. That just can’t happen and because of that waiting time, that’s why the secondary market is so ubiquitous right now.”
Easily hidden
When it comes to the business end of robbery and getting stolen goods out of the country, watches offer a simple commodity for thieves.
“They just put them on their wrists. Try to get through Heathrow with a couple of kilos of cocaine. It’s not going to happen,” said Mr Thorpe. watches to be stolen and out of the country within hours”.
Ben Russell, the Met’s commander for intelligence, told The National that watches appeal to robbers in a way that expensive jewellery does not.
“They’re more visible, they’re easier to value,” he said. “There’s also something about looking for someone who’s on their own, maybe at 2am, that’s more appealing.”
The fact that “they’re small items that can hidden easily” also attracts thieves.
Spain in the frame
It is not only the police in the UK who have been dealing with groups of North African watch robbers.
Another gang which included an Algerian and a Moroccan, stole luxury watches worth €170,000, after travelling to Majorca from Barcelona.
Each of the gang’s six members had specific functions such as monitoring and selecting targets and then carrying out the thefts in Palma last year.
Also in Palma, police arrested two Moroccan members out watch robberies in areas popular with holidaymakers. In the winter, they travel to the Canary Islands to commit crimes, taking advantage of the good weather and tourism.
Remain vigilant
Despite being the target of criminals, there’s no indication the lure of the luxury watch is going to fade and predictions for the coming decade are for the booming market to continue to flourish.
In the meantime, the Met Police advise owners of luxury watches to photograph and insure them, and register them on the several specialist databases that have sprung up in response to the spate of robberies.
When out and about, it is important that anyone wearing an expensive watch remains vigilant and aware of their surroundings, says the force.
Det Insp Tom Rogerson, who led the investigation into the Algerian-led gang, told The National he was “pleased in this case that the sentences reflect the serious