While football fans enjoy themselves all night long at bars in downtown Shanghai districts during the World Cup, pickpockets have set their eyes on easy prey.

Xuhui District police have stepped up their plainclothes patrols along bar streets, on the lookout for opportunists.

They caught a suspect red-handed after he stole a phone from a woman outside a bar on Donghu Road during the early morning on June 17.

The suspect, surnamed Cui, approached a woman and plucked the mobile phone from her bag. The phone fell onto the ground, and Cui picked it up and walked away, footage from a surveillance camera outside the bar showed.

Cui has allegedly owned up to the theft. He said he targeted the woman because she seemed tired and a bit drunk and carried a bag with no zips.