"FAGIN'S HEIRS", splashes the Mail, picturing a little girl peering through a window in Slough. She was one of 11 small children rescued by police from a Romanian gang. "Smuggled here and trained as thieves," says the paper. "Dickens' Britain lives on."
"The children, who will now be interviewed by specialist officers, are often bought for as little as a few hundred pounds from their Romanian parents and sent to towns in England to steal from tourists, businessmen and commuters," says the Times.
The newspaper lists some of the scams used by the pickpocketing gangs. They include "hugger-muggers", who approach pub- and clubgoers at closing time and embrace them while an accomplice robs them, and the practice of bumping into people at cash machines and grabbing their money while they are distracted.
* This is an extract from the Wrap, our digest of the daily papers.
