Latest news with #AdamGibson
Hindustan Times
11 hours ago
- Business
- Hindustan Times
The new geography of stolen goods
THE MSC RUBY is almost ready to leave Felixstowe. Seven remote-controlled gantry cranes are still at work, stacking containers in the ship's bays. Some 11,000 containers pass through this port each day, making it Britain's primary conduit to the arteries of global trade. The Ruby's next call is Gran Canaria—then, the long run down the coast of Africa. Watching the scene, Adam Gibson, the lone police officer at the port whose job is finding stolen cars, sounds rueful: 'There's no way in hell I can search even a small fraction of them. We could be standing here now and there could be three or four boxes of stolen cars just there in those stacks. They could be manifested as teddy bears.' Without many people noticing Britain has become a leading exporter of stolen goods. In the past decade the number of vehicles stolen in the country has risen by 75%. Most end up on container ships; the top destination is west Africa. More recently London has become the 'phone-snatching capital of Europe'. If the victims manage to track their devices, the goods are most likely to turn up in China. British farmers are plagued by raiding gangs. Their tractors and GPS kits usually head east, to Russia or eastern Europe. For centuries criminals have nicked valuable products and smuggled them across borders, beyond the reach of the law. Britain today shows how this model has evolved in new and alarming ways. Encrypted communications have enabled criminal gangs to operate and co-operate more freely than ever before, and establish global supply chains. As countries in Africa and Asia have become richer, demand for the products common on the streets of the rich world is growing. This combination has spawned a flourishing criminal enterprise. Call it Grand Theft Global Inc. Britain is a 'perfect place' for this business, says Elijah Glantz of RUSI, a think-tank, because of its saturated consumer market and weak export controls. There are lots of expensive cars and phones to steal, and it is easy to get them away. There is also almost no deterrent: Britain's police solve only 5% of crimes (and 2% of vehicle thefts). In continental Europe and America such criminal enterprise is growing, too, though America has stronger scrutiny of exports due to fear of fraud and tax evasion. Canada has been hit by a rash of vanishing vehicles. But for now, Britain has the dubious title of world leader. 'The UK sees itself as a recipient of criminality, not an exporter,' says Mr Glantz. Cars show how the model has evolved. Like other rich countries, Britain experienced a sharp drop in vehicle crime in the 1990s, thanks to immobilisers and other technology. In 2013 Britain had only 2.7 thefts for every 1,000 privately owned cars, according to RUSI. Now it is 4.4. Thefts have risen from 90,000 in 2020 to 130,000 last year. That has fed into a 45% real-terms rise in the cost of car insurance (in the EU it has risen only in line with inflation). Vehicle crime is 'my number-one issue', says Dan Tomlinson, the Labour MP for Chipping Barnet, a leafy north London suburb. The method is typically as follows. To defeat sophisticated security systems, thieves use specialised equipment. Once in, they mask the car with fake number plates and use jammers to override GPS tracking. Then they move it, usually across county lines (collaboration between police forces is often poor), where it will be sold to a group that handles logistics. Sometimes the car is hidden in a shipment of other goods, under a false manifest. More often, the gang employs a third group to give the car a 'new identity'—not only paperwork but markers including the vehicle identification number, a unique code stamped on the chassis. Uncontained This whole process—from theft to container—often takes less than a day. That is partly because Grand Theft Global Inc is not one outfit but a sophisticated supply chain. It is also lucrative. Consider a Toyota Hilux, which when new costs around £40,000 ($54,000). The group that steals one might be paid £1,500 for a night's work. If another gets it to west Africa, where Hiluxes are sought after, they can sell it for more than it fetches in Britain. In his large inspection tent at Felixstowe, Mr Gibson provides a guided tour. The cars are all shiny SUVs, though most have been dented by ratchet straps (the thieves don't mind because that can be fixed cheaply at the other end). Shelves are piled with engines, batteries and sundry parts from cars taken to a 'chop shop', a freelance operator who will break them up without asking questions. Some are literally sawn into thirds. Gangs have also begun to target rental companies using fake documents. On the day your correspondent visits, Mr Gibson opens a container, following a tip-off. Inside is a Porsche 911 Carrera S that was rented in Germany two weeks ago: somehow it has found its way into a box in Britain, bound for Africa. Between 2021 and 2024 almost four in ten stolen cars intercepted at Britain's ports were heading for the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (NaVCIS). The DRC borders nine countries, making it an ideal hub from which to serve a growing African market. One in five was heading for the United Arab Emirates. From there gangs reach customers across the Gulf. Most thefts in Canada follow the same two routes. Buyers largely want SUVs that can handle poor roads. Increasingly, however, the elite also want sports cars, which often stick out on the streets of Kinshasa (not least, because many are right-hand-drive). Sometimes, says Mr Gibson, thieves seem to work to an 'order'. Grand Theft Global Inc works in a similar way for phones. Some 70,000 phones were stolen in London last year, a rise of more than a third on the year before. Britain accounts for 40% of the stolen phones in Europe. As with cars, low-level thieves sell them on to a fence (a thief might get £100-200 for one that is unlocked, or £30-60 for one that isn't). Again, third-party services have popped up, such as shops that specialise in overcoming security features. Large batches of phones are then wrapped in tinfoil to prevent tracking, and exported, often via container ships. Remarkably, investigations have found that most end up in one place: Huaqiangbei market in Shenzhen. Demand in China for second-hand phones is huge; those that cannot be unlocked are broken apart and rebuilt. And there is no better place to do that than Huaqiangbei, the world's largest electronics market. Because Shenzhen is where many of the phones were made in the first place, there is a ready supply of skilled workers. According to a study by Zituo Wang of the University of Southern California, the primary source of stolen phones identified in China is Britain. British farms, meanwhile, have been targeted since Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to sanctions on legal trade. In 2023 the value of claims for stolen GPS kits rose by 137%. Today London, tomorrow the world It may be that Grand Theft Global Inc is thriving in Britain because the country has particular vulnerabilities. Or perhaps criminals there have just been quicker to pick up on them. London is, after all, often a city where innovative methods in criminality first emerge. There is little reason to think this one will not be exported, too. To see why, consider four factors. First is the way containerised shipping works. Around the world, border agencies overwhelmingly focus on imports, hunting for people and drugs. In many countries, exports are hardly checked at all. Anyone can book a container. The way ships are filled—tiers of 'freight forwarders' buy batches of containers and sell them on—makes auditing hard. Only a tiny proportion of containers will ever be opened up, let alone X-rayed; typically just when authorities receive a tip-off. For each container Mr Gibson holds up and searches, the police must pay the port a fee of £200. Second, the ability to covertly communicate, sell goods and transfer money online has tipped the scales in favour of criminal groups. Until recently, even highly professional outfits found it hard to do this (case files abound with stories of drug kingpins struggling to make themselves understood on clunky satellite phones). Now someone who wants a Porsche in Kinshasa can be linked seamlessly, via several intermediaries, with someone prepared to steal one in Kent. 'These groups are just doing business in a very modern way,' says Ruggero Scaturro of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime, a think-tank. In Britain Grand Theft Global Inc is seen as so low-risk that many drug gangs are shifting into it. That links to the third factor: supply and demand. As cars and phones have become more sophisticated, they have become more expensive in relation to incomes. That alone has made stealing them more attractive. But it has also fuelled a particular type of demand: most middle-class consumers in China cannot afford a new iPhone. Many Africans want better vehicles, but the used-car market remains dominant, legal dealerships scarce, and premium cars have not yet reached the economies of scale that bring costs down. These gaps will continue. As the market for stolen goods becomes more efficient, prices will fall. Once a particular model is sold, there will be demand for parts. Fourth, police forces largely remain in the dust. NaVCIS has enjoyed some success, intercepting 550 cars in the past year. But that is a small fraction of what gets through. Mr Gibson is one of three officers on the whole south coast. Britain's police have yet to catch any high-ups in the business. European forces do not even have dedicated investigation teams. Across the rich world, police resources tend to be directed towards 'higher harm' offences. The gains to trade In some ways the success of Grand Theft Global Inc is a story of globalisation. It uses the infrastructure of global commerce, designed for frictionless trade. Identifying stolen goods amid so many containers is like finding 'needles in haystacks', says Tim Morris of the Association of British Ports. Globalisation created the supply chain that allows each iPhone—assembled from nearly 3,000 components—to reach the hands of a consumer. The same forces inverted see that phone yanked out of it, re-exported, and broken apart again. Yet Grand Theft Global Inc can also thrive in a world that is increasingly fragmented. Tariffs make stolen goods only more competitive. Sanctions, like those on Russia, boost demand for criminal activity. When countries are less co-operative, it is easier to ship goods to places from where they are unlikely to be recovered. Indeed, while Grand Theft Global Inc hurts the rich world's consumers, the countries benefiting from the trade have little incentive to curb it. Unlike those in Europe, authorities in China do not make it hard to sell stolen phones. The country is not part of the Central Equipment Identity Register, a global database that networks use to block stolen devices. 'China really doesn't care about this problem,' says Mr Wang. Even if African countries wanted to clamp down, says Mr Glantz, they would struggle. 'Enforcement capability in Cameroon or the Congo is almost none.' In theory sending goods halfway round the world is an added cost. But the way the shipping industry works, a container is paid for only when it reaches its destination. If it is intercepted, the cost is borne by the freight forwarder. Extra distance can also reduce the willingness of insurers to pursue recovery. One officer says French police have shown her videos of stacks of stolen cars in Senegal that cannot be repatriated. Once the MSC Ruby leaves port, its contents are as good as gone.
Economist
a day ago
- Business
- Economist
The new geography of stolen goods
Britain | Grand Theft Global Inc Cars, phones, tractors: how high-end products are increasingly stolen to serve distant markets The MSC Ruby is almost ready to leave Felixstowe. Seven remote-controlled gantry cranes are still at work, stacking containers in the ship's bays. Some 11,000 containers pass through this port each day, making it Britain's primary conduit to the arteries of global trade. The Ruby 's next call is Gran Canaria—then, the long run down the coast of Africa. Watching the scene, Adam Gibson, the lone police officer at the port whose job is finding stolen cars, sounds rueful: 'There's no way in hell I can search even a small fraction of them. We could be standing here now and there could be three or four boxes of stolen cars just there in those stacks. They could be manifested as teddy bears.' Without many people noticing Britain has become a leading exporter of stolen goods. In the past decade the number of vehicles stolen in the country has risen by 75%. Most end up on container ships; the top destination is west Africa. More recently London has become known as the 'phone-snatching capital of Europe'. If the victims manage to track their devices, the goods are most likely to turn up in China. British farmers are plagued by raiding gangs. Their tractors and GPS kits usually head east, to Russia or eastern Europe. For centuries criminals have nicked valuable products and smuggled them across borders, beyond the reach of the law. Britain today shows how this model has evolved in new and alarming ways. Encrypted communications have enabled criminal gangs to operate and co-operate more freely than ever before, and establish global supply chains. As countries in Africa and Asia have become richer, demand for the products common on the streets of the rich world is growing. This combination has spawned a flourishing criminal enterprise. Call it Grand Theft Global Inc. Britain is a 'perfect place' for this business, says Elijah Glantz of RUSI, a think-tank, because of its saturated consumer market and weak export controls. There are lots of expensive cars and phones to steal, and it is easy to get them away. There is also almost no deterrent: Britain's police solve only 5% of crimes (and 2% of vehicle thefts). In continental Europe and America such criminal enterprise is growing, too, though America has stronger scrutiny of exports due to fear of fraud and tax evasion. Canada has been hit by a rash of vanishing vehicles. But for now, Britain has the dubious title of world leader. 'The UK sees itself as a recipient of criminality, not an exporter,' says Mr Glantz. Cars show how the model has evolved. Like other rich countries, Britain experienced a sharp drop in vehicle crime in the 1990s, thanks to immobilisers and other technology. In 2013 Britain had only 2.7 thefts for every 1,000 privately owned cars, according to RUSI. Now it is 4.4. Thefts have risen from 90,000 in 2020 to 130,000 last year. That has fed into a 45% real-terms rise in the cost of car insurance (in the EU it has risen only in line with inflation). Vehicle crime is 'my number-one issue', says Dan Tomlinson, the Labour MP for Chipping Barnet, a leafy north London suburb. The method is typically as follows. To defeat sophisticated security systems, thieves use specialised equipment. Once in, they mask the car with fake number plates and use jammers to override GPS tracking. Then they move it, usually across county lines (collaboration between police forces is often poor), where it will be sold to a group that handles logistics. Sometimes the car is hidden in a shipment of other goods, under a false manifest. More often, the gang employs a third group to give the car a 'new identity'—not only paperwork but markers including the vehicle identification number, a unique code stamped on the chassis. Uncontained This whole process—from theft to container—often takes less than a day. That is partly because Grand Theft Global Inc is not one outfit but a sophisticated supply chain. It is also lucrative. Consider a Toyota Hilux, which when new costs around £40,000 ($54,000). The group that steals one might be paid £1,500 for a night's work. If another gets it to west Africa, where Hiluxes are sought after, they can sell it for more than it fetches in Britain. In his large inspection tent at Felixstowe, Mr Gibson provides a guided tour. The cars are all shiny SUVs, though most have been dented by ratchet straps (the thieves don't mind because that can be fixed cheaply at the other end). Shelves are piled with engines, batteries and sundry parts from cars taken to a 'chop shop', a freelance operator who will break them up without asking questions. Some are literally sawn into thirds. Gangs have also begun to target rental companies using fake documents. On the day your correspondent visits, Mr Gibson opens a container, following a tip-off. Inside is a Porsche 911 Carrera S that was rented in Germany two weeks ago: somehow it has found its way into a box in Britain, bound for Africa. Between 2021 and 2024 almost four in ten stolen cars intercepted at Britain's ports were heading for the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (NaVCIS) The DRC borders nine countries, making it an ideal hub from which to serve a growing African market. One in five was heading for the United Arab Emirates. From there gangs reach customers across the Gulf. Most thefts in Canada follow the same two routes. Buyers largely want SUVs that can handle poor roads. Increasingly, however, the elite also want sports cars, which often stick out on the streets of Kinshasa (not least because many are right-hand-drive). Sometimes, says Mr Gibson, thieves seem to work to an 'order'. Grand Theft Global Inc works in a similar way for phones. Some 70,000 phones were stolen in London last year, a rise of more than a third on the year before. Britain accounts for 40% of the stolen phones in Europe. As with cars, low-level thieves sell them on to a fence (a thief might get £100-200 for one that is unlocked, or £30-60 for one that isn't). Again, third-party services have popped up, such as shops that specialise in overcoming security features. Large batches of phones are then wrapped in tinfoil to prevent tracking, and exported, often via container ships. Remarkably, investigations have found that most end up in one place: Huaqiangbei market in Shenzhen. Demand in China for second-hand phones is huge; those that cannot be unlocked are broken apart and rebuilt. And there is no better place to do that than Huaqiangbei, the world's largest electronics market. Because Shenzhen is where many of the phones were made in the first place, there is a ready supply of skilled workers. According to a study by Zituo Wang of the University of Southern California, the primary source of stolen phones identified in China is Britain. British farms, meanwhile, have been targeted since Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to sanctions on legal trade. In 2023 the value of claims for stolen GPS kits rose by 137%. Today London, tomorrow the world It may be that Grand Theft Global Inc is thriving in Britain because the country has particular vulnerabilities. Or perhaps criminals there have just been quicker to pick up on them. London is, after all, often a city where innovative methods in criminality first emerge. There is little reason to think this one will not be exported, too. To see why, consider four factors. First is the way containerised shipping works. Around the world, border agencies overwhelmingly focus on imports, hunting for people and drugs. In many countries, exports are hardly checked at all. Anyone can book a container. The way ships are filled—tiers of 'freight forwarders' buy batches of containers and sell them on—makes auditing hard. Only a tiny proportion of containers will ever be opened up, let alone X-rayed; typically just when authorities receive a tip-off. For each container Mr Gibson holds up and searches, the police must pay the port a fee of £200. Second, the ability to covertly communicate, sell goods and transfer money online has tipped the scales in favour of criminal groups. Until recently, even highly professional outfits found it hard to do this (case files abound with stories of drug kingpins struggling to make themselves understood on clunky satellite phones). Now someone who wants a Porsche in Kinshasa can be linked seamlessly, via several intermediaries, with someone prepared to steal one in Kent. 'These groups are just doing business in a very modern way,' says Ruggero Scaturro of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime, a think-tank. In Britain Grand Theft Global Inc is seen as so low-risk that many drug gangs are shifting into it. That links to the third factor: supply and demand. As cars and phones have become more sophisticated, they have become more expensive in relation to incomes. That alone has made stealing them more attractive. But it has also fuelled a particular type of demand: most middle-class consumers in China cannot afford a new iPhone. Many Africans want better vehicles, but the used-car market remains dominant, legal dealerships scarce, and premium cars have not yet reached the economies of scale that bring costs down. These gaps will continue. As the market for stolen goods becomes more efficient, prices will fall. Once a particular model is sold, there will be demand for parts. Fourth, police forces largely remain in the dust. NaVCIS has enjoyed some success, intercepting 550 cars in the past year. But that is a small fraction of what gets through. Mr Gibson is one of three officers on the whole south coast. Britain's police have yet to catch any high-ups in the business. European forces do not even have dedicated investigation teams. Across the rich world, police resources tend to be directed towards 'higher harm' offences. The gains to trade In some ways the success of Grand Theft Global Inc is a story of globalisation. It uses the infrastructure of global commerce, designed for frictionless trade. Identifying stolen goods amid so many containers is like finding 'needles in haystacks', says Tim Morris of the Association of British Ports. Globalisation created the supply chain that allows each iPhone—assembled from nearly 3,000 components—to reach the hands of a consumer. The same forces inverted see that phone yanked out of it, re-exported and broken apart again. Yet Grand Theft Global Inc can also thrive in a world that is increasingly fragmented. Tariffs make stolen goods only more competitive. Sanctions, like those on Russia, boost demand for criminal activity. When countries are less co-operative, it is easier to ship goods to places from where they are unlikely to be recovered. Indeed, while Grand Theft Global Inc hurts the rich world's consumers, the countries benefiting from the trade have little incentive to curb it. Unlike those in Europe, authorities in China do not make it hard to sell stolen phones. The country is not part of the Central Equipment Identity Register, a global database that networks use to block stolen devices. 'China really doesn't care about this problem,' says Mr Wang. Even if African countries wanted to clamp down, says Mr Glantz, they would struggle. 'Enforcement capability in Cameroon or the Congo is almost none.' In theory sending goods halfway round the world is an added cost. But the way the shipping industry works, a container is paid for only when it reaches its destination. If it is intercepted, the cost is borne by the freight forwarder. Extra distance can also reduce the willingness of insurers to pursue recovery. One officer says French police have shown her videos of stacks of stolen cars in Senegal that cannot be repatriated. Once the MSC Ruby leaves port, its contents are as good as gone.
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Business Standard
20-06-2025
- Automotive
- Business Standard
UK car theft crisis near 15-year high as manufacturers face 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. The thieves he's up against are not just opportunists or joyriders. Most vehicle theft nowadays is orchestrated by organized 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 per cent 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 per cent 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 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 per cent of stolen cars intercepted at British ports between 2021 and 2024 were destined for the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose centralized location and access to seaports makes it a good hub for distributing cars across Africa. An additional 20 per cent were headed to the United Arab Emirates, which saw normal delivery channels disrupted last year following a flood. Almost 7 per cent were to be sent to Cyprus and nearly 6 per cent to Jamaica, both countries where cars drive on the left, like in the UK. Another 5 per cent 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 per cent. 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 organized, 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 organizing 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 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 per cent 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 per cent 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.
The Star
20-06-2025
- 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
Bloomberg
20-06-2025
- Bloomberg
UK Car Theft Crisis Pits Manufacturers Against High-Tech Gangs
Business A growing number of stolen vehicles are being shipped overseas by technologically sophisticated criminal groups. 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.
