Cops rumbled suspected mobile phone pick-pockets in the early hours of Sunday morning (December 5) in Dalston, after a tip off from a CCTV operator.

The Hackney council employee spotted two characters acting suspiciously in Kingsland High Street around 4am.

He looked on as one man took a mobile phone and a wallet out of an unwitting victim’s pocket, dropping them on the floor for the second suspect to then pick up.

Both men were tracked by CCTV walking down Shacklewell Lane and turning into Alvington Crescent, where cops arrived on the scene a couple of minutes later.

Both men were detained after searching the area where the suspects were last seen, cops found five mobile phones hidden in a plastic bag in a garden, as well as two mobile phones and money found on both suspects.

Two men aged 20 and 22 have been arrested on suspicion of theft, and have been bailed to return to Stoke Newington Police Station on December 16.

Police are trying to trace the owners of the suspected stolen mobile phones.