Brazen crime gangs are posing as legitimate contractors in order to access manholes and steal valuable copper cables without arousing suspicion, security experts have warned.

Last week a man in a high-vis jacket was filmed emerging from a hole in the ground just yards from a police station in central Birmingham after allegedly being caught targeting broadband equipment.

It comes amid a surge in cable thefts fuelled by soaring metal prices which have plunged entire villages into internet black-outs and disrupted rail services.

Experts warn that organised gangs - many of them linked to Eastern European criminals - can earn as much as £10,000 in a single night by ripping out broadband connections and selling them to unscrupulous scrap metal dealers.

The sneaky tactic comes after the Daily Mail revealed how workmen digging up roads were in fact a criminal gang stealing electricity to power Albanian-run cannabis farms producing £21million of illicit drugs.

Just days ago it was revealed that metal thieves are targeting electric vehicle charging points, with more than 400 incidents since 2023.

One cable theft gang which left BT Openreach facing an estimated £1million repair bill was caught with bundles of cash totalling £54,000 when police swooped.

Another criminal who targeted roadside cabinets to steal thousands of pounds worth of equipment had a ‘dressing up box’ of workman’s clothing plus a roadworks sign in the back of his van.

He was finally arrested after a genuine Virgin Media engineer became suspicious and called the police.

Ryan Powell, group managing director of security firm First Response Group, told the Daily Mail it was a growing problem.

'Cable theft is no longer an opportunistic crime,' he said. 

'It has become increasingly organised, driven by rising copper prices and carried out by gangs who often pose as legitimate contractors using vans, high-visibility clothing and fake IDs to operate in plain sight.'  

Among communities cut off by cable thefts is a village in Lincolnshire where 2,500 homes and businesses last week lost phone and internet services.

The Openreach cable network in one stretch of rural Cambridgeshire was targeted eight times in the space of a month in 2023.

It prompted police in the county to warn the public to be on the look-out for thieves ‘masquerading as legitimate contractors’ or ‘bogus roadworks’.

According to a report by MPs in 2024, metal theft costs the UK economy £500million a year, with as many as 60 criminal gangs involved in the lucrative illicit trade.

As well as the broadband network, Britain’s railways are particularly at risk, with an estimated 50 days’ worth of delays in 2022 blamed on cable theft.

Vacant offices are another favoured target - in January 2025, Romanian burglar Alexandru Parole was jailed over the theft of over £2million in copper wiring from the empty headquarters of Chinese tech giant Huawei in Reading.

In 2024, a gang which travelled in 4x4s with false registration plates and accessed manhole covers to steal BT Openreach cables was jailed for a total of 14 years.

Billy Lee Junior, Levi Lee, Samuel Sheady-Jones and Ashley Byford targeted locations across Essex, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Wrexham.

After cutting cables running for several miles underground, the group winched them out and sold them on the black market, causing thousands of customers to lose service.

When police hunting the gang raided a property in Essex they found more than £50,000 in bundles of cash.

The quartet later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal.

In 2020, a Virgin Media employee became suspicious of two men in a hired van accessing roadside cabinets in Wiltshire and called police.

Officers stopped the vehicle and found a ‘dressing up box’ of workmen’s clothes plus a roadworks sign.

The pair stole broadband equipment worth £2,500 in their ‘spree’, a court later heard.

‘They were disguised as workmen with a road sign to look as if they were legitimately engaged in work,’ prosecutor Philip Gibbs said.

One of the men, Kevin Craig Mills, 40, from Coalville, Leicestershire, later admitted going equipped to steal and was jailed for 10 months.

At the time a warrant was out for the arrest of his alleged accomplice.

In 2019, police in Worcestershire smashed a gang which had been posing as workmen to steal batteries from Openreach fibre optic roadside boxes for the value of the scrap lead they contained.

While the stolen equipment was worth around £15,000, a court heard the cost for Openreach to replace them ran into millions, leading to higher bills for customers.

Dean Davies, 32, was jailed for 27 months over the thefts, while co-defendants, Maurice Davies, 33, and Michael Nelson Smith, 21, received suspended sentences.

And in 2024, police in Hampshire arrested a 33-year-old man spotted pulling cables from a manhole cover in Hythe after he allegedly falsely claimed to be sub-contracting for Openreach and Virgin.

The firms confirmed there were no scheduled works due to take place in the area, with around 100m of cable recovered.

Officers are still investigating, with a suspect currently on bail.

Experts warn that the thefts are so lucrative - and with the chances of being caught so low - that copper is becoming increasingly tempting for criminals.

Just last week residents of Moulton Chapel in Lincolnshire said they felt like they were ‘back in the 1970s’ after cable thefts cut off their broadband connection.

According to Robin Edwards, a former senior officer at British Transport Police and one of the founders of the National Infrastructure Crime Reduction Partnership, around 80 per cent of cable theft is linked to organised crime.

'Dressing to blend in is certainly a tactic used by cable theft gangs,' he told the Daily Mail.

'Many people feel that someone dressed in high visibility clothing is allowed to go wherever they want.

'Once stolen cables have been sold on to unscrupulous scrap dealers there is no way of tracing them.

'So the emphasis is on bringing in preventative measures which deter thieves from targeting a particular site in the first place.

'If commodity prices continue to climb, my fear is we will see more of this time of crime, with theft from the renewable sector like wind and solar farms a growing problem.'

Mr Powell, of First Response Group, added: 'The problem is getting worse because organised crime groups see it as low risk with high rewards, while the consequences rarely match the disruption caused.

'The impact goes beyond replacement costs, creating serious safety risks and reputational damage, and no infrastructure is off limits, from railways and EV chargers to wind farms. 

'Tackling this requires a more proactive approach, with better intelligence sharing across industry to help police secure prosecutions.'

An Openreach spokesperson said: ‘Cable theft is a serious criminal act that causes significant disruption to everyday life, leaving homes and businesses without vital phone and broadband services and putting vulnerable people at real risk.

‘We take these incidents extremely seriously.

‘When our network is damaged, engineers work around the clock to carry out repairs and reconnect customers as quickly as possible, while our dedicated security team works closely with police and other partners to identify those responsible and prevent further attacks.

‘Our network is alarmed and monitored 24/7, and we will continue to do everything we can to protect our infrastructure and support law enforcement in tackling this problem.’

Marian Agarlita, 37, Sorin Condrache, 45, and Aldafin Poenaru, 48, have all been charged with stealing Openreach cables with a value of around £50,000 after last week’s incident in Birmingham.

They were remanded in custody ahead of a court hearing next month.