POLICE have smashed London's biggest luxury car theft gang.

The thieves were believed to have stolen and stripped up to 120 cars - mostly Mercedes - a month.

Police said the gang was "stealing cars to order" from around the capital.

They were then taken to a small breaker's yard in Stratford, in north east London, where they where each car was promptly stripped to a shell.

The parts were then shipped out to Nigeria and sold at a much higher price.

It's believed the gang was turning over about £70,000 a month - or £840,000 a year - in stolen parts.

The carcass of the vehicle was then taken away and crushed for scrap metal.

"Within hours of the vehicle being stolen it would no longer exist," a Met police spokesman said.

"The stolen vehicles and parts are loaded into a truck and are placed on the middle of the lorry and surrounded by panels and parts that are not identifiable.

"The stolen parts not being visible until the lorry is emptied."

Officers from the Specialist Crime Directorate Stolen Vehicle Unit swooped on the gang yesterday afternoon.

Three Nigerian men, two aged 43 and the other 45, were arrested at the scrap yard business on suspicion of handling stolen goods and money laundering.

The alleged thieves who stole to order for the gang - four British men aged 54, 16, 27, 32 - were arrested near the scrap yard on suspicion of handling stolen goods.

DCI Stuart Dark, from the stolen vehicle unit, said: "This was a sophisticated international criminal network targeting average Londoners that had been operating along industrial production lines.

"We continue to target the activities of similar networks, putting then out of business, making London's streets safer."