A scooter gang targeting designer shops in London is believed to have struck as many as 32 times in the past six months alone.

Police believe the thieves are working to order and have been likened to a "Fagin's kitchen" of criminals.

At the beginning of the year, the gang were targeting opticians for expensive sunglasses in time for the summer holidays.

Now they have stealing handbags and designer clothes to meet demand for Christmas and the party season.

A squad of detectives set up by Scotland Yard in Westminster are examining more than 32 raids since March on shops and stores in the West End, Kensington, Chelsea and Islington.

The raids are usually carried out in the early hours and are over within minutes, if not seconds. The gang arrive on scooters with the licence plates usually obscured. The riders wear full-face crash helmets and use sledgehammers to smash the windows before grabbing the goods and taking off. Police believe they may be controlled by a criminal mastermind.

Three designer stores have been raided in the past week. On Wednesday night four men on two scooters struck at Sadie Frost's new FrostFrench boutique in Islington. One pair smashed the windows while the others escaped with goods worth about £10,000.

This week £50,000 of designer handbags were stolen from Larizia in St John's Wood High Street while the Marc Jacobs store in Mayfair was targeted last Friday.

Two weeks ago Luella Bartley's new store in Mayfair lost £10,000 in handbags.

There are few witnesses to the raids because of the timing. Senior detectives are keeping an open mind about the possibility of a mastermind but do believe the raids are staged to order.

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said: "We have had some success in that people have been arrested and charged in the courts."

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