Latest news with #NaVCIS
Daily Mail
12 hours ago
- Automotive
- Daily Mail
Where does your stolen car end up? The parts of the world criminal gangs typically transport them to
Your stolen car could be halfway around the world in the blink of an eye as well-funded gangs have established a seamless supply network to ship pinched motors from the UK to various locations across the globe. And we can reveal the major routes organised criminal operations are typically taking to export stolen cars to different countries - with many of these vehicles ending up as far away as Africa. A new joint investigation by Thatcham Research and the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (NaVCIS) has laid bare for the first time the international scale of UK vehicle crime operations. It found that a motor stolen in the UK is most likely to end up in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 38.5 per cent of robbed cars exported there. With geography a key factor, Congo's central positioning on the African continent, deep seaport, and borders with nine countries make it an ideal distribution hub for stolen vehicles. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the second most common destination (20.1 per cent), followed some way behind by Cyprus (6.7 per cent). Despite the UK having the highest levels of in-vehicle security - such as trackers and immobilisers - in the world, a vehicle is stolen every five minutes, based on 2024 data. Earlier this week This is Money revealed Britain's most targeted cars, with Lexus and Abarth the brands proportionally most likely to be pinched based on the volume of thefts against the number of available cars in the UK. The investigation found that Jamaica and Georgia were the fourth and fifth most popular export markets for car theft gangs between the years 2021 and 2024. Respectively, 5.7 per cent and 5.1 per cent of stolen UK cars ended up in these countries. The huge spike in motor crime and illegal exports is being driven by a number of wide-ranging factors, including the scarcity of vehicle parts, desirability of certain markets and models, geopolitical events, and even natural disasters. Geography might play a key role in Congo, but flooding in the UAE last April is believed to be behind the surge in thefts of SUVs, with criminal enterprises exploiting the shortage of official replacement vehicles and spare parts by using stolen motors to fill the void. Thatcham gives the example that dealerships of targeted brands were quoted three months for the delivery of a replacement vehicle whereas it can take a ship just 25 days to travel from London Gateway to Jevel Ali, south-west of Dubai. Cyprus, like Congo, has a geographical pull; it's a gateway country to other destinations for parts and vehicles which border the Mediterranean. Jamaica, on the other hand, has seen a rise in part due to the imposition of an imported car tariff, making criminal trade more profitable. And because both Cyprus and Jamaica drive on the left, the high standard specification of UK vehicles and the steering wheel position are key factors in these markets appearing third and fifth respectively. The investigation reveals the typical routes taken by criminal organisations shipping stolen cars around the world Georgia is one of the countries that's seen geopolitical factors have an impact on the illegal vehicle market. Heavy sanctions and withdrawal of an official presence by manufacturers in neighbouring Russia has seen an increase in demand for vehicles and parts, with Georgia a key destination for stolen cars. The conflict in the region has also altered the types of vehicles being stolen, with pickup trucks rising to 16.8 per cent of vehicles intercepted in 2024, up from 4.7 per cent the year before. Chief research and operations officer at Thatcham, Richard Billyeald commented: 'Parts scarcity, vehicle desirability, natural disasters and geopolitical events is driving an illegal market in a wide variety of luxury cars, SUVs and pickups, with insurers settling claims worth £640m in 2024. 'We will continue to work with vehicle makers to improve vehicle security and establish how to remotely disable stolen vehicles in a safe manner, as well as making stolen parts more difficult to reuse.' Investigators open up a shipping container at Felixstowe amid suspicions stolen cars are inside Dispatches: Britain's Car Theft Gangs Exposed is on Channel 4 On Thursday, a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary showed the NaVCIS action attempting to tackle illegal exports of stolen UK cars. This included the dramatic opening of a shipping container at a UK port, revealing three pick-up trucks inside which were intended to be smuggled to Africa. As Thatcham's research highlights, the Middle East and Africa have a huge market for second-hand car parts, driving the demand for stolen cars in the UK which is also linked to illegal drugs market. Adam Gibson, an officer of NaVCIS, a privately funded force working with the UK police, carried out the sting along with his team, where the stolen cars were found stacked on top of each other with falsified paperwork. Mr Gibson said: 'They've got £40,000 plus per car. That's not how you load them in a container. This box is headed to Africa, which the roads out in Africa are obviously suited to this kind of thing.' A white pick-up truck Mr Gibson found had a 2022 number plate - but he determined that it was actually made in 2023 and had been reported stolen from Kent in January. He continued: 'Whereas we were finding Range Rovers worth £150,000, we're getting pickup trucks and SUVs worth £40,000 now. Stolen cars are stacked in the containers, sometimes with five models inside Casual theft has disappeared but criminal gangs have taken over Thatcham said the rise in vehicle crime is the direct result of organised gangs operating criminal businesses for huge financial gain, which now far overshadows the volume of 'casual thefts' seen in Britain previously. Billyeald said: 'Casual thefts and joy riding of the 1980s and '90s has all but disappeared, with vehicle manufacturers having succeeded in making it very difficult for amateurs to steal modern vehicles. 'However, the organised criminal gangs who have replaced them are well-funded and sophisticated in their approach, combining specialist electronic equipment with an international logistics network.' He said that a collaborative approach needs to be established in order to take down these criminal operations. 'Raising vehicle security alone will not prevent thefts, we believe that beating these criminals requires cooperation between government agencies, vehicle manufacturers and ourselves to reduce the value of stolen assets and therefore the incentive to steal them,' he told us.
The Star
17 hours ago
- Automotive
- The Star
UK car theft crisis pits manufacturers against high-tech gangs
To the untrained eye, the red shipping container at Felixstowe looked no different to the thousands of others stacked up at Britain's busiest seaport. Destined for Africa, its contents were listed as 'household goods,' but to police officer Adam Gibson, something didn't add up. So workers broke into the container. Gibson was right. Inside were four sport utility vehicles – three Toyota RAV 4s and a Lexus RX 450h. Two were on the ground and the others were dangling from the roof, squeezed in like Tetris blocks. After they were lifted out on a forklift, Gibson ran checks. The cars were all stolen and their license plates had been changed. Car theft is a growing problem in the UK. Almost 130,000 vehicles were stolen in the year ending March 2024 – near a 15-year high – costing insurers £640mil (RM 3.67 bil), according to the most recent data. And at least some of them are ending up overseas. As one of the few specialist officers at the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (NaVCIS), an industry-funded police unit focused on car-related crime, Gibson's job is to scour containers and keep stolen cars from leaving the country. The thieves he's up against are not just opportunists or joyriders. Most vehicle theft nowadays is orchestrated by organised gangs cashing in on overseas demand for SUVs. And with numbers climbing, police have struggled to stop it: for each stolen car Gibson and his colleagues intercept, he estimates that another nine slip through their fingers. 'It's not amateurs that are playing at this,' Gibson said. 'This is proper business.' As cars have become increasingly high-tech, a technological arms race has also kicked off between manufacturers and thieves. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that 58% of vehicle thefts in England and Wales in the year ending April 2024 happened with the help of 'signal-jammers' – electronic tools capable of disrupting remote locking devices. That was up from 40% the previous year. Toyota, which also owns Lexus, said theft in recent years had reached 'almost epidemic proportion in the UK'. In response, carmakers have introduced keyless technology that 'goes to sleep' when not in use, trackers to keep tabs on a stolen vehicle's location and other security measures. Toyota said it's invested millions in combatting signal jammers, which can cost as much as £30,000 (RM 172,143) apiece. Jaguar Land Rover, whose luxury SUVs are so attractive to thieves that insurance companies have been reluctant to cover them, recently rolled out a software upgrade for some models that makes it impossible to drive a car without having its keys. 'It's like a game of tennis,' Gibson said. 'Criminals come out with a new bit of kit, manufacturers will get round it, sometimes by buying it on the dark web and reverse-engineering it. But five minutes later, once they've stopped it, they've come out with a new bit of kit.' By the time a stolen car arrives at a port, owners have usually already filed a claim with insurers, which tend to quickly write off a vehicle and pay up. Those hoping to recover their cars, however, stand the best chance of doing so while they're still in the UK. Even if trackers do locate the vehicle abroad, it can be difficult to get a foreign country's authorities to collaborate, and repatriation costs are not cheap. According to data from NaVCIS and analysts at Thatcham Research, nearly 40% of stolen cars intercepted at British ports between 2021 and 2024 were destined for the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose centralised location and access to seaports makes it a good hub for distributing cars across Africa. An additional 20% were headed to the United Arab Emirates, which saw normal delivery channels disrupted last year following a flood. Almost 7% were to be sent to Cyprus and nearly 6% to Jamaica, both countries where cars drive on the left, like in the UK. Another 5% were headed to Georgia, which offers easy access to Russia, where cars are sold on the black market to bypass international sanctions. At Felixstowe, Gibson relies on intuition and red flags to spot suspicious shipments. A container registered to a person associated with previous criminal activity might set off an alarm, for instance, as would a container that's heavier or lighter than its listed contents suggest. Yet with around 60,000 containers moving through UK ports every day, gangs exploit the fact that the vast majority of them will never be checked. 'They know there's a very slim chance of actually being caught,' said Simon Hurr, a vehicle security expert at Ford. And among those who were caught and charged with vehicle theft between 2022 and 2023, the conviction rate was just 2%. Alongside Gibson, NaVCIS employs just two other patrol officers to cover four ports in the south of England, and about nine additional office staff. After the Home Office cut support for the agency, it has relied entirely on private funding – primarily from the Finance & Leasing Association, the trade body for motor finance – to cover its costs. As car theft has become more organised, however, 'policing hasn't kept pace,' said Mark Kameen, project lead for the recently established National Vehicle Crime Reduction Partnership (NVCRP). The joint initiative, put together by police, the Home Office and automakers like JLR and Toyota, helps coordinate the response to vehicle thefts, including by organising raids on gangs. While owners are compensated when their cars are taken, vehicle theft isn't a victimless crime. The more cars are stolen, the more insurance premiums go up. In the first three months of the year, British car owners were quoted an average of almost £800 (RM4,590) a year for insurance – down from a peak 18 months ago but still far higher than the historical average. The government has taken steps to crack down on car theft. As well as helping set up and fund the NVCRP, it proposed measures in February that would impose a maximum sentence of five years in prison on anyone in possession of a signal jammer. Carmakers are also starting to see their own efforts pay off. JLR said the theft rate of its vehicles has fallen by over 50% since it introduced new security measures in November 2022, and that fewer than four out of every 1,000 of its new cars are stolen. Toyota carried out its own trial last year, fitting some cars with tracking systems. Of those that went missing, 96% were recovered thanks to the trackers, the company said. It now plans to roll them out in certain models as an optional feature. These changes have also had ripple effects on the black market, according to Gibson. While SUVs are still most in demand, he's noticed a move away from luxury vehicles. 'Five years ago, it was Range Rovers, BMW X5s, high-end Mercedes. In the last two or three years, we've started to see Hyundais, Kias and Toyotas.' Cutting open his final container after a busy day at Felixstowe, Gibson discovers a mess of valuable car parts alongside a more curious item: a London ambulance that he suspects is on its way to Ukraine. It's hauled out with a forklift, revealing chopped-up cars stuffed in back of the container that can be sold on for parts. More valuable components are crammed into the ambulance to make use of the space. Gibson's work here is finished. What happens next is up to the insurer. – Bloomberg
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE The cars smuggled out of Britain after being stolen to order: Moment shipping container hiding three pick-up trucks is intercepted by investigators as it made its way to Africa
This is the dramatic moment investigators opened a shipping container at a UK port hiding three stolen pick-up trucks which were intended to be smuggled to Africa. The three vehicles worth at least £40,000 each were found to have been stacked on top of each other in the container which was intercepted at Felixstowe in Suffolk. Experts told a new Channel 4 Dispatches documentary that Hyundai, Kia, Toyota and Lexus cars were increasingly being stolen as well as higher-value Range Rovers. The Middle East and Africa have a huge market for second-hand car parts, driving the demand for stolen cars in the UK which is also linked to illegal drugs market. The sting was carried out by Adam Gibson, an officer from the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (NaVCIS), a privately-funded force working with the UK police. Mr Gibson could not reveal on camera why the containers he was checking were deemed suspicious amid fears such a revelation could give criminals an advantage. But the clip showed his team opening up the unit at Felixstowe, which is the UK's largest container port where 11,000 shipping containers pass through each day. Felixstowe is the UK's largest container port where 11,000 containers pass through each day Inside the container he found three cars stacked on top of one another, all stolen and with falsified paperwork. Mr Gibson said: 'We've seen five cars in a container this size, so you'll see quite quickly from the way it's probably loaded that something's not quite right.' Looking inside, he added: 'They've got £40,000 plus per car. That's not how you load them in a container. This box is headed to Africa, which the roads out in Africa are obviously suited to this kind of thing.' A white pick-up truck Mr Gibson found had a 2022 number plate - but he determined that it was actually made in 2023 and had been reported stolen from Kent in January. He continued: 'Whereas we were finding Range Rovers worth £150,000, we're getting pickup trucks and SUVs worth £40,000 now. 'We are seeing brands like Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, Lexus. So the quality has dropped off, I suppose, but the volume has gone up.' Across three containers, Mr Gibson found 12 cars in total - with family photographs visible inside at least one of them. He added: 'Some gangs will literally gut the car of any personal effects. Others will just leave everything. 'There's kids' seats, toys, all sorts of them. I'm constantly told by people that vehicle crime, where it's victimless, it's just the insurance companies. 'Yes, the insurance company pay out, but we all get our premiums go up because the insurance aren't going to absorb it. So it has a knock-on effect on everyone else.' Last year the number of stolen vehicles recovered by NaVCIS increased to 589, having been at 76 in 2021 – and many of them had been broken down for parts. The documentary also obtained exclusive figures suggesting seven out of ten cars stolen in England and Wales are never recovered. Freedom of Information requests to police forces in England and Wales also revealed that – for the 18 forces who responded - only 3.4 per cent of reports of a car being stolen between 2020 and 2024 led to someone being charged or summonsed. Highly organised gangs are stealing cars then dismantling them at so called 'chop shops' before shipping them out of the country. In one clip, two car thieves demonstrate how they can use keyless technology bought from the dark web how they can steal a car in just 20 seconds.
