Police smash gang behind theft of luxury cars...

[mab01uk]

"Surrey Police have broken up a gang behind a spate of high-value car thefts in the Surrey suburbs, with vehicles targeted and whisked away in under a minute. In some cases the vehicles were taken over the Channel to be sold by criminals in Europe before their owners woke up and realised they were missing.
Surrey police confirmed that seven people had been arrested for targeting car makes including Mercedes, BMW, Maserati and Range Rover — luxury models that range in cost from £50,000 to well in excess of £120,000.
The gang are suspected of stealing 17 vehicles in May in the affluent areas of Weybridge, Hinchley Wood and Esher. Police said they accessed the cars using relay boxes — one near the car and another close to the front door of the owner’s home where a car’s key fob is often kept — to extend its signal and make it appear that the device was within range of the car.
The gang are suspected of immediately switching number plates and moving the cars across the Channel, sometimes intact and sometimes in parts.
Detectives raided a “chop shop” in Essex, where some of the vehicles had been stripped of parts, and closed it down. A lorry carrying stolen parts was successfully intercepted at Dover in a joint operation with Essex police.
Affluent areas are routinely targeted by criminal gangs, according to police, with huge increases in car theft across the country. The Office for National Statistics recorded 130,389 vehicle thefts last year — an increase of 25 per cent compared with 2021.
Lisa Townsend, the elected police and crime commissioner for Surrey, said high-value car theft, often involving keyless methods, was a serious issue across the county, which has “a lot of high-net-worth individuals”, with a particular spike in activity in wealthy areas such as Esher and Oxshott.
Townsend said the gangs were often Albanian and were regularly involved in other serious organised crime such as county lines drug dealing and the illegal sale of weapons."
Full Article in the Times here:-
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/poli ... -93g5cdx5n

[AndyPen]

Nice to read some car thieves are being caught

Keyless entry cars really do need security pouches for keys etc.