A woman has taken to covering a mobile case in taramasalata to try and ‘teach phone snatchers a lesson’.
Maddie Campion said she was sick of seeing someone’s phone being stolen every day on her commute into work.
But instead of falling victim to the thieves, the comedian decided to ‘fight crime with chaos’.
She told Metro: ‘I thought to myself, “what would a gloved phone snatcher find really irritating”, and the idea was born.
‘I originally wanted to use fish paste to make it as smelly as possible, but inflation meant taramasalata was the next best choice.’
Maddie stood at the crossroads at Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Circus in October in an attempt to see if a phone snatcher would grab the grimy case.
But it appears the smell was enough to scare off any potential thieves, and Maddie discovered her plan was full proof.
‘I like to think I showed them who is boss and put the fear of fish into them, but I do think there were a few arrests just two days before I stood there,’ she said.
Maddie, who has since moved out to Florida, said she wanted to use the trick more often, and is now encouraging others to do the same.
She said: ‘I think it’s great to inconvenience these people.
‘There’s no phone snatching out here in the US, but I wouldn’t want to try it anyway in case they had a gun.’
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Maddie has since had other suggestions, such as putting barbed wire on the case rather than a delicious dip.
But she said she did want to ‘fight crime with crime’ and put herself at risk.
She said: ‘Someone told me I could get really injured and they may spot the dip on the case before reaching me.
‘But they are going so fast on the e-bikes I highly doubt they would notice.’
Some 78,000 people had phones or bags stolen from them on British streets in the year to March 2024.
That is a rise of more than 150% on the 31,000 ‘snatch thefts’ in the 12 months before, according to data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
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