Right, because they're broken down for parts, but there's only so much you can do. For one, every time Apple tries to do something to lock down parts, right to repair people decry it as some sort of trojan horse to shut down third party repairs. Moreover even with parts serialization, there's only so much you can do. There's no inherent way for a bag of electrolytes to identify itself to a phone. The best you can do is add a chip to it and identify using that, but you can't prevent that chip from being transferred.

Phones aren't stolen for the phone, they're stolen because carriers enable the theft. There's a reason why thieves now cycle around on e-bikes and grab the phone from your hand, and the reason is premium rate phone numbers and shortcodes. They want the phone unlocked because they start texting as many SMS shortcodes (that they control) as they can, siphoning thousands of dollars worth of purchases off you.

If you make the mistake of not notifying the carrier immediately, which you won't think to do because everyone thinks the phone was stolen for the phone itself, you're on the hook for the charges.

Carriers know that no legitimate users use (or even know of) shortcodes, yet they have them enabled by default on all plans, exactly because they take a cut from this theft and they can turn a blind eye to it by pretending the charges are consensual.

This month, London police discovered and intercepted a shipment of 1,000 stolen iPhones destined for ... China.

"46 people were arrested, including two men who were detained in London last month on suspicion of handling stolen goods after 2,000 phones were found in their car and addresses linked to them."

These aren't local street thugs. This is a massive, global criminal enterprise:

"London Metropolitan Police, which had initially assumed that "small-time thieves" were behind the city's wave of phone thefts, got their first major lead on Christmas Eve last year. A woman using "Find My iPhone" had tracked her stolen device to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport."

"We discovered street thieves were being paid up to 300 pounds ($403) per handset and uncovered evidence of devices being sold for up to $5,000 in China."

https://www.timesunion.com/news/world/article/uk-police-unco...

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/industrial-scal...