WHERE STOLEN VEHICLES END UP.
While some of the tens of thousands of vehicles stolen in Canada each year are taken for quick joyrides or sent to local “chop shops,” a good number are smuggled by organized crime groups to far-flung destinations, including China, West Africa and the Middle East, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
As the bureau releases its annual auto-theft report, which found that Ford pickup trucks remain the most stolen vehicle in Canada, it is calling on law enforcement to not only pay attention to the things being smuggled into the country by organized crime but also things smuggled out.
“The main emphasis right now is imports because of the fentanyl issue. They’re not worrying about what’s being exported, what’s going out. That’s a major problem,” said Henry Tso, the bureau’s vice-president of investigative services and a former RCMP superintendent.
“Organized crime groups are taking advantage of the situation. It’s so profitable.”
Without more aggressive enforcement, drivers will inevitably pay more in insurance premiums, he said. In Ontario, where premiums now average around $1,400, Tso says about $236 of that is to cover fraud and theft.
Police reported about 85,000 vehicle thefts in 2017, an increase of six per cent from 2016, according to Statistics Canada.
There are multiple transit routes that stolen vehicles can take when they’re smuggled abroad.
From Vancouver, they’ll typically go to Seattle and then to Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. China will be the final destination for some.
Stolen cars shipped out of Toronto, Montreal and Halifax go in myriad directions.
Some are delivered to New York City, Baltimore and Savannah, Ga., while others cross the Atlantic to ports in Belgium, Germany, Poland, Finland and Italy.
Italy is a known transit hub for stolen vehicles destined for West Africa, Tso said. In 2015, Toronto police announced they had arrested numerous individuals suspected of being involved in the thefts of 500 high-end vehicles from affluent neighbourhoods in the city.
Many of the vehicles ended up in containers bound for Nigeria and Ghana. Police said at the time they believed the group was linked to Black Axe, an organized crime ring based in Nigeria known for fraud and money laundering.
Other vehicles that arrive in Italy will go on to different parts of the Middle East, including Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, Tso said. He said terrorist groups in the region have been known to covet large North American vehicles because of their capacity to carry explosives.
While luxury SUVs are the most common type of vehicle smuggled abroad, older Ford pickups consistently rank among the 10 most stolen vehicles, the insurance bureau found. In 2017, nine out of 10 were Ford F-250s or F-350s built from 2000 to 2007. The only other vehicle on the list was the Lexus GX460 SUV.
In 2016, the Toyota 4Runner SUV joined the Ford pickups and the Lexus in the top-10 list.
In recent years, thieves have found ways to get access to cars that use keyless fobs. Tso said they’re using devices that pick up unencrypted signals emitted by fobs inside someone’s house and using those signals to unlock and start a car.