A moped robber who punched victims as he snatched £11,000 worth of mobile phones from pedestrians in just five days has been jailed for nearly four years.
Jumaane Cadogan, 19, admitted a string of offences including 12 counts of theft, an attempted snatch and two of robbery.
The teenager launched his crime spree on March 12 when he stole a £1,300 white Honda moped and a crash helmet parked on Shoreditch High Street in Hackney.
He used the bike on five separate days to target pedestrians by riding up on pavements and snatching phones from their hands. He later abandoned it.
On two occasions he punched victims without provocation. On March 17 he rode up to a woman using a £1,000 iPhone X on Wallis Road in Hackney grabbing the phone and punching her in the face.
Two days later, he did the same to a man in Pitfield Street, Hackney, punching him in the chest before grabbing his phone.
On another occasion he failed to snatch a woman’s £750 iPhone in Islington when she fended him off.
Police say the robberies were carried out across Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham and Islington.
Cadogan was caught after Islington council CCTV operators alerted police to a man riding a black Honda moped without a crash helmet.
He was stopped and gave a false name but police used a mobile fingerprint device to establish his true identity and found he was disqualified from driving until December this year.
Cadogan, of Islington, who is unemployed, was found with £1,780 in cash, believed to have come from the sale of stolen mobile phones.
Detectives searched his home and found clothing identified as being worn at the time of the offences.
He was jailed this week for three years and 10 months at Wood Green crown court.
His case comes as latest Met figures show the number of thefts and snatches in London halved in the 12 months up to the end of March.
Figures show there were 11,390 moped-enabled offences in the year 2018-19, compared with 23,896 in the same period the previous year.
Chief Inspector Jim Corbett, of the Operation Venice drive against moped crime, said: “Cadogan was malicious and violent whilst offending and through the actions of the arresting officers and the tenacity of the investigators, his criminal offending has been stopped, further reinforcing our commitment to reducing moped and motorcycle crime across London.”