Gone are the days when car thieves hotwired vehicles or hacked ignitions with a screwdriver and a USB cable. Now hi-tech crooks are relying on antennas and cloned key fobs to steal your ride and resell them for big bucks.
Police said would-be thieves, often standing outside a victim’s home, use handheld antennas to trick a car into starting by hijacking the signal between the vehicle and its key fob.
Once the car is running, criminals plug a key programmer into the car so that it learns to recognize the replacement key fob instead of its original mechanism, authorities said.
“These are tools that locksmiths use, but criminals learned how to use it and now they’re starting up cars and stealing cars with it.” said Tom Burke, a former New York Police Department detective who specialized in auto theft cases.
These auto thefts are unlike the Kia Boyz trend that exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, the veteran investigator said.
Kia Boyz was a social media trend in which juvenile suspects targeted older model Hyundais and Kias to go on joy rides.
Mr. Burke said organized crime groups are behind the key fob thefts, which are being carried out coast to coast.
He said the thieves have institutional knowledge, largely from prison stints, that allows them to scrub a car’s vehicle identification number and even produce phony Carfax reports and vehicle title documents.
These seasoned criminals have an eye for luxury and high-performance cars.
Last month, law enforcement in suburban St. Louis, Missouri, broke up a theft ring that was cloning key fobs for souped up muscle cars such as Dodge Chargers and Challengers.
“These thieves are going for the expensive vehicles,” St. Charles Police Lt. Dan Gibbons told KTVI. “And they’re trying to sell them, so these vehicles are quickly sent out of state, or they’re stripped.”
Lt. Gibbons said the criminals would move a car or chop it for parts in roughly two days.
Charging documents said the suspects stole 40 cars. Police recovered 21 of those vehicles.
Authorities didn’t share how many people were arrested for the stolen autos but said five suspects were linked to crimes such as murder, assault and gun possession.
Milwaukee police this summer accused a man of being involved in a sprawling car theft operation after he was charged with stealing a Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk outside a hotel.
Police told WISN-TV that they tracked the vehicle to suspect Justin Powell’s home, where officers found more than 15 key fobs associated with different cars inside the residence. Officers also located two key programmers in the house.
Powell, a convicted felon, faces gun and drug charges on top of the offenses related to the stolen Jeep.
Some suspects are breaking into cars the old-fashioned way and syncing up cloned key fobs on the spot.
In May, prosecutors in Queens, New York, charged 20 suspects linked to more than 120 stolen cars that were procured by busting out windows and hooking up a key programmer within seconds.
After the cloned key fob became usable, the thieves quickly sold them to associates in New York and Tennessee to get rid of the hot merchandise that included BMWs, Land Rovers and Mercedes-Benzes, prosecutors said.
“This is one of the most prolific and organized auto theft rings we have ever uncovered in New York City,” District Attorney Melinda Katz said this spring. “With these indictments, we have dismantled a criminal enterprise that stole at least $4.6 million worth of vehicles from our streets and driveways.”
Mr. Burke, the former NYPD auto theft detective, said many victims won’t see their cars again until it’s listed online for sale — sometimes in a foreign country.
Africa is a major market for stolen cars, he said, but criminals typically sell their products where they have roots.
Mr. Burke mentioned a case in which the Triads, a Chinese transnational crime syndicate, was stealing Audi A6s and shipping them back to their home country.
He said the Audi model that sold for about $30,000 in the U.S. at the time was sold for more than $100,000 in China.
“There’s more money made in the stolen car industry than there is in drugs,” Mr. Burke said.
Simple math is prompting organized crime groups to focus on the cloned key fob thefts.
Kelley Blue Book lists the average price of a new car at about $50,000. In comparison, the former detective said a kilogram of heroin only nets $35,000 on the street.
The risk involved makes the choice even easier.
Mr. Burke said drug charges will quickly land you behind bars, with a conviction leading to some serious prison time. But being caught with a stolen car, especially if the suspect is a juvenile, usually results in a slap on the wrist.
“They’re getting cut loose, so there’s the problem,” he said. “The stolen car theft is out of control because of the money — the money’s there.”
