In Brazil, a cell phone is stolen every 33 seconds

A cell phone is stolen or stolen (in the latter case, with violence or serious threat) every 33 seconds in Brazil. The impressive figure was published this Thursday, July 18, in the 18th Public Security Yearbook of Brazil.

According to data collected from police station records across the country, in 2023, the year to which the consolidated data released Thursday relates, 107 mobile phones were stolen or burglarized every hour last year. That means that in total, complaints have been filed about the theft or burglary of almost a million of these treasured devices, or 937,294 to be exact, which in some cases cost their owners their lives due to delays or refusals to hand them over to the criminals.

Due to their high value and ease of sale after theft or robbery, mobile phones have become the main target of criminals operating on the streets of Brazil, mainly in large cities such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Belo Horizonte and Salvador. In São Paulo, the city that is the champion of these crimes, there are gangs specialized in robberies and thefts of mobile phones that operate in broad daylight, mainly in the old center of the capital São Paulo and in the Avenida Paulista area, the financial center of Brazil’s largest metropolis, and where passersby tend to carry more sophisticated and therefore more expensive and desirable devices.

Notorious are the so-called “bicycle gangs” formed by young people, some still teenagers, who ride bicycles along main streets and avenues and who, when they notice a distracted person talking on a mobile phone on the side of the road. pavement, speed up the bike, snatch the device from the victim’s hands and run away at speed between the cars. Another common type of robbery occurs when drivers take the opportunity to look at their mobile phone when they are forced to stop at a closed traffic light, when criminals suddenly appear, you don’t even know where they are from, they break. into the car window with an elbow or a stone and with the same movement are already hanging inside the car and taking the device.

However, in the capital of São Paulo, in the old center, there is even a street, Rua Guayanazes, known as the street of stolen cell phones, since it is there that most of this equipment is taken, stolen or stolen in many cases by drug addicts and sold, in particular, to Brazilian recipients or Africans who then send them to sell in African countries at absurd prices. The large number of such thefts or robberies, as well as those officially reported to the police, is much lower than the actual number, since many citizens do not even file a complaint because they do not believe that they will be able to return the equipment, has already led to the development of a habit of people taking them with them, in addition to what they really have. They also use the so-called “thief’s cell phone”, a second device, older or cheaper, which they give to the criminal in case of robbery during which they keep the mobile phone where all their data is actually stored, namely bank details.