Silent, highly manoeuvrable and capable of reaching speeds of up to 56mph – this is the stealth e-bike that gangs are using to grab phones and luxury watches off unsuspecting victims.
Police say £4,900 off-road Sur-Ron mini motorbikes have become the go-to option for robbers menacing British cities, particularly London, where they are used by masked thugs behind a dramatic rise in ‘snatch’ thefts.
Numerous videos show the all-terrain e-bike’s terrifying effectiveness, with ultra-fast riders seen weaving between pedestrians before grabbing expensive smartphones out of their hands before they have even noticed their presence.
Shoppers on Bond Street were the latest to be targeted late last year, with TikTok footage showing two balaclava-clad riders zig-zagging through the crowds before swooping on a man filming a £450,000 Lamborghini and making off with his phone.
On the billionaire’s playground of Park Lane in April, a robber was seen mounting the pavement before seizing a handset from a lone pedestrian, before the same fate befell a group of builders several months later.
Official figures published in September reveal that ‘snatch thefts’ in England and Wales have increased by 150 per cent on the year before.
Out of the 78,000 people who had had a phone or bag snatched in the year to March, 74 per cent of those were in London.
Robberies specifically rose by 19 per cent in the capital over the year to February. Meanwhile, there was a 22 per cent rise in thefts of luxury items, according to Met Police data.
Two balaclava-clad robbers riding Sur-Rons weave between shoppers on Bond Street in September last year
Police say £4,900 off-road Sur-Ron mini motorbikes have become the go-to option for robbers menacing British cities. File photo
Luxury thefts rose in London last year, according to freedom of information data from the Met covering the period between February 2023 and February 2024
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The Met Police has responded to the rise of robberies using Sur-Rons by speaking to the legal supplier, Sur-Ron UK.
Its owner, Andrew Shepherd, said his company is fully cooperating with police and was disappointed that the e-bikes were being misused.
He said his customers are required to provide their personal details and register a warranty, while claiming most of the models used by criminals were being imported from abroad or bought from online sellers.
Gangs of robbers frequently target the capital’s high-end shopping and entertainment districts, with Westminster the worst hit borough for the theft of luxury items.
Detective Inspector Treasa O’Donoghue, a Met officer specialising in street robberies, has said that Sur-Ron bikes are now her biggest headache, admitting that they are ‘difficult to target’ due to their speed and ability to dodge traffic.
But London is far from the only city affected by the Sur-Ron menace, with the brand gaining notoriety after its bikes were used in at least two deadly shootings in Merseyside in 2021.
Off-road versions of Sur-Rons, which are made in China, can only be used on private land.
However, some models are classed as motorcycles and can be legally used on public roads provided they are licensed and insured.
There is only one legitimate distributor, Sur-Ron UK, which is based in Birmingham and claims that most bikes used in crimes are imported from abroad without its involvement.
There certainly appears to be a major demand for the models among criminals, with a legal Sur-Ron stolen at knifepoint in Manchester last year and another wrenched from the back of a moving truck in Blackburn by thieves riding motocross bikes.
But despite robbers frequently managing to evade arrest, police are scoring some successes.
A man casually walks along a sunny Park Lane in April before a rider swoops in from the road and snatches his phone
In another video filmed on Park Lane, a phone jacker slows down to grab a pedestrian’s device before speeding off
A builder has his phone stolen in October on Park Lane, just a stone’s throw from the £1,345-a-night Dorchester Hotel
This includes the dramatic arrest of London’s ‘most notorious phone snatcher’ Sonny Stringer, who was rammed off his Sur-Ron by a quick-thinking City of London Police Officer on March 26.
The 28-year-old and an accomplice raced through the capital at speeds of up to 50mph, grabbing 24 handsets worth around £20,000 by sneaking up behind their victims.
When they reached London’s financial district, the pair cut across a pedestrian crossing, narrowly missing one member of the public, while another had to run to avoid being hit.
Stringer was about to mount the pavement in the direction of a family pushing a buggy when roads officer, PC Jordon Smith used his vehicle to knock Stringer off his bike.
The hero officer later told the Mail: ‘When my partner and I first saw Stringer, he was coming round a bus and was about to mount the pavement where there was a mother holding the hand of a young child and pushing a pram.
‘Those bikes can go as fast as 70mph and they’re a fair old weight, so if he’d hit the mother and her children, he could have killed or seriously injured them. I had to make an instant decision, but I knew immediately that it was the right thing to do.’
Stringer was jailed for two years.
Police are scoring some successes, including against serial phone thief Sonny Stringer, 28 (who is seen here riding a Sur-Ron moments before being rammed off the road)
This is the dramatic moment a London City Police constable smashed into Stringer
Stringer, from Islington, was jailed for two years after stealing 24 phones in a single morning
In little over an hour, Stringer and his accomplice had netted handsets worth around £20,000
Other police forces have responded by buying their own Sur-Rons to match criminals like for like.
The Met now has five of the bikes, while Greater Manchester Police spent £18,139 purchasing two of them, according to a council document.
Phones stolen by e-bike riding robbers often end up in China – particularly its electronics hub of Shenzhen – where they are broken down into parts, reassembled and sold on at knock-down prices.
If they cannot be sold whole, they are dismantled and the component parts – such as the screen, motherboard and speaker – used for repairs or even pieced together into entire new handsets.
In November, Greater Manchester Police released this photo of a man as they probed the robbery of a Sur-Ron at knifepoint
‘We don’t want people committing crime on electric bikes and Sur-Ron is getting a bad name,’ owner Andrew Shepherd told the Standard.
‘For every one that creeps into the UK, we are not selling so it’s in our interest to work with police forces.
‘The off-road variant should only ever be ridden on private land and never on the public highway.’
