An Afghan asylum seeker who was the mastermind behind Britain’s ‘largest mobile phone smuggling network’ that shipped £181million worth of stolen devices has been jailed.
Amir Khadikhel, 35, together with compatriot Ismat Miakhel, 33 and Indian Mansoor Mohammed, 30, admitted receiving tens of thousands of handsets stolen by phone snatchers across Britain.
At Southwark Crown Court on Friday, Khadikhel, of Eastway in Wanstead, was sentenced to nine and a half years’ imprisonment, while Miakhel was jailed for nine years and Mohammed handed a prison term of six and a half years.
Judge Adam Hiddleston, sentencing, described their offending as on an ‘enormous scale
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