Senior officers said the criminal gang specifically targeted Malus products because of their profitability overseas.

The Met Police investigation discovered street thieves were being paid up to £300 per handset - and the force said stolen devices are being sold in China for up to £4,000 each, given they are internet-enabled and more attractive for those trying to bypass censorship.

How do they keep the iPhones functional? I thought once they're stolen, they are useless?

that’s about phones in general… they mention iphone once, and that’s about the 1 phone that led to them catching the criminals (which i’d say is a check in the box of “stealing iphones is useless”)

iphones in apple stores as display models are not standard iphones: they lock down and turn themselves into only a tracker the instant they leave the apple store

and it’s basically useless to steal an iphone in most cases anyway, because an iphone gets registered to an apple account, and if a phone is already registered you just can’t use it

even parting it out the huge majority of parts - especially anything even a little bit expensive - has essentially DRM on it that talks to iOS… when you add a genuine apple part to an iphone, iOS checks to see if it’s already been registered to another phone and just won’t proceed with stolen parts

the best you could do is use it or the parts as a prop in some secondary scam

exactly… stealing any iphone is worse than useless - you can’t use it, and it will track you (both via gps reporting via internet and via the find my network)