Keyless car theft victims urged not to go sleuthing

Manufacturers will not release tracking data to owners for safety reasons

FOR some, the microwave makes the perfect hiding place. Others use a biscuit tin. For today’s fashion conscious motorist only a Faraday pouch or mesh-lined box will do.

Motorists are being forced to go to extraordinary lengths to protect keyless car ignition fobs from criminal gangs. Thieves hack signals from keys to start the cars, steal them and then courier the vehicle through international criminal distribution networks.

It means vehicle manufacturers have become locked in a “costly arms race” with the latest kit to breach vehicle security being sold on the dark web.

However, The Sunday Telegraph has established that many of the motorists investing in car-tracking equipment are being told they cannot be given their stolen vehicle’s location amid fears they could take the law into their own hands or come face to face with crooks.

The problem was illustrated last week when Giles Coren, the television presenter, complained that officers had “no interest” in catching thieves who stole his Jaguar because the case was closed in under an hour.

His car was probably stolen through a digital interception called a “relay attack” where one thief uses an amplifier to pick up the ultra-wide band key fob signal from inside the house and broadcasts it to a receiver held by the accomplice next to the car to pretend the key is in range and so unlocks the door and readies the ignition to start on command. Mr Coren, who lives in north London, was eventually told his stolen car had been found nearby in Camden.

Mr Coren said he only discovered the vehicle because he “tricked a copper” into revealing its location.

A Jaguar spokesman said that once a car is stolen, the tracker company only releases its whereabouts to police. “We do this to avoid customers tracking the car down themselves and entering into a vulnerable situation.”

Dr Ken German, former head of the Metropolitan Police’s stolen vehicle squad who has a PhD in international vehicle crime, said the criminals can load the car on to a lorry to evade police automatic number plate recognition systems or make a dash for a ferry to take it abroad.

They can use “chop shops” – scrap yards where cars are stripped of identification codes and broken down for valuable parts, which are shipped abroad.

Mr German stressed that although “good tracking companies” have a 94 per cent recovery rate, car parts are valuable abroad where there is a boom in the second-hand car market.

“There are clever gangs coming here from Eastern Europe,” he said.

“Criminals can take cars to the docks and put them in a container and they will be in West Africa very quickly.”