The little girl was probably no more than seven but already canny enough to know the value of the pink Chanel handbag taking centre stage in a boutique in Surrey.
Security footage captures her eyeing the ‘pre-loved’ £6,000 bag like a coveted toy, then alerting a woman wearing a flowery headscarf who is feigning interest in dresses.
Neither can believe their luck. Unlike the other handbags, this bag is unencumbered by a security tag and cable.
By way of demonstration, the wily child gives it a wiggle to get the adult’s attention.
In response, the woman scoops it up and places it on the wooden floor behind a plant, out of sight of staff.
Other thieves – two women and another child – appear and for the next two minutes the gang goes through the pretence of admiring dresses pulled from racks.
Then they group together, as if around a rugby ball, and the flowery-scarf woman, in a manoeuvre that belies her sturdy frame, swoops down and the Chanel bag disappears beneath her voluminous black robes.
Such is their audacity that she and the little girl, wearing a T-shirt bearing the word ‘love’ in capitals, continue browsing with the rest of the gang for another four minutes before coolly taking their leave.
The little girl (pictured) was probably no more than seven but already canny enough to know the value of the pink Chanel handbag taking centre stage in the Phoenix Style boutique in Surrey
Security footage (pictured) captures her eyeing the ‘pre-loved’ £6,000 bag like a coveted toy, then alerting a woman wearing a flowery headscarf who is feigning interest in dresses
By the time the staff of Phoenix Style in the genteel town of Cobham realise what has happened the thieves are speeding away in a people carrier.
Using children as decoys to distract shop staff is by no means a new tactic, but the boutique’s owner, Paige Mengers, says all-female gangs featuring under-tens are on the rise and are growing ever more sophisticated.
She says the pink Chanel bag heist is a case in point, indicating the influence of organised criminals who regard high-value leather goods as a bigger target than jewels or cash.
As handbags sell for record prices at auction – the late singer Jane Birkin’s Hermès bag fetched £7.4million last summer – prices are rising in boutiques, and second-hand bags are gaining value as collectors’ items.
Mrs Mengers, a champion of small retailers, is at the front line of the shoplifting epidemic sweeping Britain – her shops are targeted weekly – and her thoughts merit serious consideration.
She has held numerous meetings with politicians over the issue and once confronted Britain’s most senior police officer on a live radio show after his force failed to show the ‘slightest interest’ in investigating a raid on her business.
In addition to the Cobham shop, she owns a boutique 13 miles away in Wimbledon Village, South-West London, which has a panic alarm linked to a police station.
In a recent raid, a gang entered the shop and stole designer bags worth thousands after deploying a secret weapon – a girl of around eight who cradled a doll to disarm staff.
‘It’s relentless,’ says Mrs Mengers, who has spent a fortune fortifying both shops.
‘Every week we find ourselves repelling attempts to steal from us. These children are not accomplices, they are victims.
‘They are being drawn into criminal behaviour before they are even old enough to understand what crime means.
‘Looking through some of the CCTV footage of incidents is deeply disturbing.
‘Adults using toddlers and primary-school children as cover or decoys to steal from my shops should be unthinkable in a civilised country.’
Last week, mobs of youths ran riot in the capital’s streets and in shops, forcing retailers to barricade their doors, and prompting Marks & Spencer to demand that the Government and London Mayor Sadiq Khan get a grip on crime and finally tackle the scourge of shoplifting.
The High Street retailer said the Mayor and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood should come clean about ‘the true scale and impact’ of shoplifting, calling for more transparency around crime statistics.
And on Saturday, Lord Walker of Broxton, the head of supermarket chain Iceland, said security staff working in shops should be allowed to carry truncheons and pepper sprays.
In response, the woman scoops it up and places it on the wooden floor (pictured) behind a plant, out of sight of staff
The flowery-scarf woman, in a manoeuvre that belies her sturdy frame, swoops down and the Chanel bag disappears beneath her voluminous black robes. Pictured: The spot on the floor where the bag was previously placed
‘We call it shoplifting, which sounds like a cheeky bit of pilfering, but actually we should just call it out for what it is, which is violent crime,’ he said.
Mrs Mengers would agree. And she too has some hard words for the mayor. ‘As a shopkeeper and a mother, I would like to ask him – at what point does this stop being solely a policing issue and become a moral failure of the capital itself?’ she asks.
‘What does this say about London today, and what is the mayor going to do to stop it? I feel strongly that this is an issue that deserves real debate and accountability.’
In a case highlighted by The Mail on Sunday last year, two men targeted both her shops in the space of 24 hours, using wire cutters to slice through cables and steal four bags worth more than £17,000 in total.
‘After that we began locking the doors and letting customers in one at a time,’ she says. ‘If some look suspicious we might tell them it’s by appointment only.’
This precaution is at once depressing and necessary. Mrs Mengers says it has thwarted untold thefts but still the fight goes on.
Later this year she will install an automatic door and intercom ‘which will allow us to buzz in customers without having to keep locking and unlocking the door’.
Like the shop’s priciest vintage wares, beat bobbies are rarities in Cobham, so Mrs Mengers relies on a private security firm to advise staff on crime prevention.
‘The safety of staff is a primary concern,’ she says.
‘It is a tragic indictment of our times that when they come to work they are thinking not only of the job at hand but of crime and whether the next customer will try to rob us.’
She shows the MoS other footage of different gangs at work. One video features two women and a child in the Wimbledon branch last month.
Pretending to inspect dresses, they struck gold while staff were busy with customers.
In a co-ordinated move, the little girl is seen pulling a dress from the rack and – while still clutching her doll – using it as a screen to conceal a blonde woman as she snatches two luxury handbags.
Still playing her part, the girl pretends to fuss over her doll, while keeping an eye on staff. All three then slip away undetected.
In a previous theft – this time back at the Cobham shop – two young girls swiped the security tag remover kept under the counter.
Once again the set-up was sophisticated.
Another video (pictured) features two women and a child in Phoenix Style’s Wimbledon branch last month. In a co-ordinated move, the little girl is seen pulling a dress from the rack and – while still clutching her doll – using it as a screen to conceal a blonde woman as she snatches two luxury handbags
In a previous theft (pictured) – this time back at the Cobham shop – two young girls swiped the security tag remover kept under the counter
Footage (pictured) shows two children snatch a security tag remover from under the counter
A woman in dark glasses and black scarf engages an assistant in a conversation about jewellery, while two others look at dresses.
Footage shows two children, who linger near her, snatch a security tag remover from under the counter.
One of them hides it up her jumper while moving to the door with a girl in yellow. The three adults then follow them.
‘The de-tagger was potentially very useful because it meant they could come back and use it to take something without setting off an alarm,’ says Mrs Mengers.
The Metropolitan Police are understood to be investigating the ‘girl with the doll’ theft.
But despite reporting the other two, Mrs Mengers has heard nothing back from Surrey Police.
It was the same last year when she made headlines for shaming police on social media after the £17,000 double raid.
Staff called police in both cases. A sales assistant would later recall being rooted to the spot, shaking with terror. She was so traumatised that she quit her job.
To Mrs Mengers’ fury, neither Surrey nor the Metropolitan Police acted.
And that was despite staff activating the panic alarm, which went unheeded, and making available pin-sharp CCTV footage of the robbers.
So clear were their faces, she says, ‘they might as well have been on television reading the news’.
It was only after she posted a video on Instagram decrying the efforts of Surrey Police and asking the public for help that she was visited by two officers.
They were there, they admitted, only because she made a ‘noise’ on social media.
‘What is happening now is despicable but I’ve long realised that I’ve got to forget about the police,’ she says today.
‘Sadly, it seems it’s up to us to fight this scourge alone.’