11 arrested for stealing €18.5 million worth of iPhones at Schiphol

A total of 11 suspects were arrested over the past months in connection with the theft of two shipments of iPhones at Schiphol Airport, the Koninklijke Marechaussee said on Monday. A total of 18.5 million euros worth of iPhone devices were stolen.

The Koninklijke Marechaussee, a policing force that works as part of the Dutch military and is responsible for airport security, launched an investigation in March last year after a shipment of iPhones worth around 3 million euros was stolen at the airport. Over the past months, the Marechaussee arrested six suspects in this investigation.

The suspects are from Zaandam, Amsterdam, Volendam, Eindhoven, and Haarlemmermeer. The latest arrest was last week. 30 thousand euros in cash and several smartphones were seized during the raids that followed the arrests.

In December last year, another Koninklijke Marechaussee team started investigating another stolen iPhone shipment, this one worth 16 million euros. The phones were stolen from a company's warehouse at Schiphol east.

Five suspects were arrested. They're from Amsterdam, Zaandam, Purmerend, Kampen, and Hoofddorp. During searches in the municipality of Haarlemmermeer and in Germany, the Marechaussee found 9,200 stolen iPhones.

The Marechaussee believes these two cases are connected. Three of the suspects were employed at the companies the shipments were stolen from. The investigation is ongoing.