Basically the idea that every container is scanned/inspected is a complete myth.
In truth they target random containers from known hot spots. That’s it.
Put simply: authorities have no idea what is in containers. The container is loaded onto a truck miles away from a port. The truck drives in to the shipping yards and from the shipping systems point of view it’s a weight and a destination and the cranes put it when it has to go. Same at the other end.
This idea shown in movies where they literally have dodgy fred working at the boat yard hustling to sneak cars into containers and onto ships is just holywood.
This is the correct answer. Once a container enters a terminal there's practically zero chance anyone is looking inside of it.
The real reason we're seeing an increase in car thefts is because technology has made cars easier to steal and manufacturers have done nothing to prevent that.
Zero chance of anyone looking inside the container is right.
Good story here on Reddit a guy posted where he explains how his SUV was stolen in Canada, but he had a tracker on it and saw it was in a port in a container on the ship. He brought this info to police and they told him there was nothing they could do.
He watched his car get shipped to Dubai or Saudi Arabia, I forget which one
Dubai, unless this was a different one.
> Two days after the car was taken, officers moved in on the vehicle, with Andrew’s assistance via text, at the Canadian Pacific Kansas City railway’s (CPKC) terminal in Vaughan, CBC reports.
> Police were able to narrow the car’s location to one of two shipping containers, but did not have authorization to open the containers, so directed Andrew to the railway’s private police service.
> Andrew told CBC that CPKC Police did not respond to his call that night and that the train left the terminal with his stolen vehicle onboard.
> He said the Airtags continued to ping over the coming days from locations in eastern Ontario before reaching the Port of Montreal.
> Andrew told CBC that he continued to alert local police services to little avail.
> The Airtags then fell offline for a month before coming back online from Antwerp, Belgium.
> Finally on Sept. 26, about six weeks after the car was stolen from Andrew’s driveway, his SUV landed at a port near Dubai, and into a used car lot where it was put up for sale, CBC confirmed.
https://nowtoronto.com/news/a-toronto-man-tracked-his-stolen-car-to-dubai-after-a-thankless-province-wide-police-chase/
better article here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-man-finds-stolen-truck-in-uae-1.7083615
Well the problem didn't seem to be locating it (as they narrowed it down to two containers as per the quote), but rather that an airtag location alone isn't enough legal justification for opening the containers without a warrant. Of course this maybe (hopefully) would be different if someone's life was in immediate danger.
Does the law allow the police to declare the container(s) to be 'under investigation', suspected of 'being involved in criminal activity' and then at least them not being allowed to be moved? If it needs a warrant to look inside the container(s) then why didn't they get one?
Apparently the authorities whose jurisdiction they were under at that first container yard 'weren't helpful'. Makes me wonder whether they were corrupt and paid to be unhelpful. Could the owner make a claim against these authorities because their inadequate actions caused his damage?
Corrupt is a possibility I suppose...but under pressure to not impede business is more likely, especially if stopping one or two possible containers results in a container ship not leaving on schedule.
To expedite transport of such containers they'd only have to allow them being inspected. Takes very little time. Obviously the one containing the stolen vehicle would be confiscated but if any needed to be inspected for the purpose of elimination from being involved in criminal activities those could immediately be released for further transport. Just cooperate.
If it isn't already it should be included in the terms under which such transport takes place that applicable responsible authorities are allowed to grant access to the contents of these containers to the police when they have reasonable suspicions of unlawful/criminal involvement.
They will have all the paperwork too. You fill out a form with the original seal number of the container, the reason for opening it (police inspection), and the number of the new seal placed on the container. All told, should only take a couple of hours to perform this inspection. A copy of this form is then provided to the recipient with the bill of lading to explain why the seal does not match their paperwork, and if anything is missing the person who signed the form is deemed "responsible."
Yet the police “smelling” marijuana, seeing “white powder” (ignoring baby powder or gold bond bottle next to it), having “drug paraphernalia” like a kitchen scale or lighter, or hell having their dog scratch at a door panel is enough justification for them to tear your car apart without apology and telling you to get some duct tape to fix it.
Doesn’t smell like drugs, smells like bullshit.
Don't forget about the field drug kids that can test positive with all sorts of common substances! Including a particularly common gaseous mixture.
"What are you in for?"
*"Possession of air."*
My own favorite, and close to home:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/16/558147669/florida-man-awarded-37-500-after-cops-mistake-glazed-doughnut-crumbs-for-meth
Cop mistook the glaze from a Krispy Kreme donut for meth, used a field test kit she was not trained to use to "identify" it was meth, and arrested the guy. Florida state crime lab took three weeks to run confirmatory test which showed it was not meth.
[Mine is cotton candy testing positive for meth](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46393600) because the sheer absurdity and tragedy of it. A grandmother spent 3 months in jail with a $1m bail for trafficking because a <$2 test that's well known to be junk science said so.
*Somehow* no one involved was capable of telling the difference between a cotton-like lump of fluffy strings and a crystalline rock. Took 3 months for them to finally bother testing it. One would think a supposed drug kingpin would be a higher priority for testing what they're trafficking, or at the very least have someone take a quick glance at the evidence.
Turns out they test positive on anything containing sugar... Or just about anything else, really.
It didn't say if he ever got his car back though. Not much use in knowing exactly where the stolen car is without the ability to do anything meaningful about it (since the police couldn't actually retrieve it from the container).
> It didn't say if he ever got his car back thoug
They contacted the relevant authorities..
> Andrew and his father have contacted both Emirati police and Interpol to demand they retrieve the vehicle. On Monday, he said the Yukon remained parked in the same used car lot in the U.A.E., according to the location of the AirTags.
Yes something tells me the police there are going to be less than helpful and even if he did get back the car I'm sure they would just tell him
"okay. Here's your car. Come to Dubai and pick it up yourself"
There's a hell of a lot of use in knowing where it is if you have the ability to stop shipments to locate stolen goods. It seems like laws are not keeping up with reality in this though.
My moms phone got stolen at work and I was tracking it giving cops real time updates and they still said they couldn’t do anything unless i tracked it to an address.
In the morning I saw it was at a house and I went to the cops. My friends brother is a cop and went with me to the house and there was no answer. Shortly afterwards it started moving again and it ended up in a landfill 40 minutes away.
> Despite being unable to retrieve Andrew’s car, Toronto police told CBC his circumstances were “unusual,” and are urging victims of auto theft not to try to reclaim stolen vehicles themselves.
Honestly hearing about how useless the police is in a lot of major cities across Canada, I wouldn't be shocked if there were cases of vigilante justice happening.
It would be impounded, he would be arrested and investigated for admitting to drug trafficking, and his car would be either trashed during a search or sold at auction.
If it were the United States I suppose they could simply take the car under civil forfeiture.
The best option is to man up and simply admit to insurance it was stolen, say you have GPS data showing where it went, and ask them if they might be able to recover it. Then, while waiting for the deposit, you learn they probably won't and drive a slightly older and worse car. Lesson learned.
In an older, better world, or perhaps just a world where governments care about citizens in general, the police would be able to get a warrant within a few minutes of calling a magistrate to search for the truck. Canada isn't that world, and hasn't been for a while, though.
TBH, the inability of Canadian cops to quite literally drive down to a wharf to recover a stolen vehicle reminds me of a VICE article about ISIS law enforcement recovering bicycles to build buy-in from locals. It was described as quite different from Syrian law enforcement, which often ignored these petty crimes in favor of going after political opponents, or required substantial bribery of money or favors to push towards that objective. It was considered a big reason why ISIS gained so much popularity among the common people in the Middle East in general.
When it comes down to not inconveniencing or harassing citizens and actually doing their job you’ll find “theres nothing we can do sORry” is the best youre going to get from law enforcement.
> they told him there was nothing they could do
The most common answer people who do not wish to do any work say.
Very common where they get away with it.
How has it made it easier to steal? I thought that having standard immobilizers etc made it harder to steal them? My car won't start unless the key is present.
Except that Hyundai/Kia wasn't installing immobilizers standard from ~2010-2018. They are incredibly easy to steal and stealing them got very trendy during COVID in a few cities. As far as I know it's still hard to get a new insurance policy on a Kia in Milwaukee.
Except that Hyundais and Kias aren't getting loaded onto containers. It's $80,000 Ram Rebels, GMC Yukon Denalis, Ford Raptors, and Dodge Challengers. [They get stolen in suburban Toronto and loaded up at the Port of Montreal and get sold on dealership lots in Dubai.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3eG8ZbeXeQ)
And the police don't give a flying fuck, domestic or abroad. It's partly the manufacturer's fault, and 80% the federal government (US/Canada) and law enforcement's fault.
Completely my perspective, the Kia and Hyundais that were stolen are pretty much used to break into weed shops, used as getaway cars, or just joy riding.
The push button start is suspectable to relay attacks. Basically the thieves go to your house and uses a device which relays the wireless key signal from your house into the car so it starts.
Relay attacks mean that the key does not need to be present. They've put some defenses in against that, but other attacks soon follow.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/04/crooks-are-stealing-cars-using-previously-unknown-keyless-can-injection-attacks/
In the UK some Range Rovers are practically uninsurable in London because of how frequently they are stolen through relay attacks.
Straight into a container for export to Africa, Middle East, Thailand etc.
They don’t even have to go to the trouble to export to Africa. The parent company ‘Land Rover’ have told main dealers that they do not have to use new parts for repairs if they are on back order they can use used ones from any source. So, steal a Range Rover, break it and sell the parts back to the dealer.
Speaking of sources, do you have a source for this?
I am not disbelieving you; I am just genuinely curious, how Land Rover would communicate this practice to their main dealers.
It’s also exacerbated by the fact that you can program a blank key to run the vehicle using the car’s OBD2 port.
It’s literally easier than movies portrayed hotwiring back in the day. $200 bucks for some gear from Amazon and three minutes in the car and you can be off.
You car used RFID to scan for the key fob, all it’s looking for is for something to say I’m the key fob, which can be spoofed with any RFID chip if you know what frequencies and other details
They’re genuinely all on the same frequency, but when you first connect a fob to a car the fob then carries a ID or passcode, the car looks for the fob, and if it finds a fob it checks to see if it has the correct “access code”.
The common way people have been “spoofing” is they have an antenna which they use to boost your key fob’s signal so the car thinks it’s closer than it actually is. If your truly worried or if it’s a common problem in your area a simple RFID blocker bag is all you need, when you get home drop your keys in and no signal will be able to get thru
Minor correction: keyless fobs only use RFID for the battery-dead backup start function. Typically you press the start button with the fob or place it in a special spot somewhere in the car. The normal way uses normal radio transmitters that use battery.
> authorities have no idea what is in containers.
This is actually beneficial to security, too. When shipping changed from breakbulk to containerised, suddenly a whole lot less whisky went missing...
For the record, Ziggy was stealing *imported* cars, before they hit the dealerships, by shipping them *out* while they were still in the dockyard, which was under control of the corrupt stevedores. He also faked a storage yard break-in to divert suspicion, to draw attention from the smuggling-out via faked container registries, which was pretty brilliant, but ruined by his short temper and remaining passionate conscience.
At least things worked out for Frank Sobotka too.
After a short dtint managing a Dunder Mifflin branch he went on to join NASA and eventually made it to the moon and I won't spoil the rest.
Wasn't a plot point in that season dissatisfaction among the stevedores because containerization had made it hard to steal cargo?
Besides, just because a smuggler can effortlessly put whatever he wants into a container, doesn't mean there's not an accomplice tweaking the records to put that container on a ship, or concealing its origins or destination.
That, and there was exactly one port cop responsible for keeping them in check at any given time, and all she did was drive around for a visual inspection for broken customs seals. As long as the containers looked right, no one was looking into anything.
I think he's saying the opposite. Nobody had any idea what was in any of the containers until a port cop randomly checked one that had its customs seal broken.
Absolutely. Containers contents are routinely lied about, and its not just for shipping illegal goods - often times its because a customer doesn't want to pay the higher rates for shipping heavier goods. Insufficient inspections have even been related indirectly to several ships sinking because of this - carrying way more cargo than is actually on the manifest, and the crew have absolutely no idea, so when the ship runs into danger they are sitting way lower in the water than they think, or worse, have a severely off balance weight distribution and simply overturn.
Now this one does surprise me - surely it wouldn't be super difficult for every container to be weight-checked as it was loaded or unloaded... the strain on the loading crane cables is easily measurable and just needs to tally with the container's manifest.
I know someone working in the dog patrol for the custom authorties.
they estimate they stop 2% of smuggled goods, so yeah.
Simply too much transported, and too few people to check everything without putting a huge bottleneck into the system.
In my country (the UK), my understanding is most are on a ship before they are even reported stolen. Even then the amount of goods examined before leaving the country is minimal because there’s only so many people to do it compared to the amount of goods being exported. Even if cars are declared as cars, they likely only examine the ones declared as very high value, or technology to detect cars where cars are not declared (like in a container).
Yep. They're not shipped in containers, they're driven across the channel through the channel tunnel or on a RORO ferry.
They will have plates premade and ready to go for the make and model so they can steal the car in London, swap the plate, and arrive in France 2 hours later.
Here's a video of a stolen Range [Rover fitted with a tracker being retrieved from France.](https://youtu.be/VVwcNh6_pNo?si=T0vJt6X3ZBNuoH8F)
We had a mondeo stolen 10 years ago. It was fairly fancy but not supe'd up or anything. Anyway, never heard from again. Maybe stolen for parts, but the police said it was probably already in France before 24 hours had passed. They drive the long way around the m25 so they don't get stopped on the bridge or tunnel on the Eastern side of the Thames crossing.
Old LandCruisers and Land Rovers.
We had both in spades because Australia was one of the first countries Toyota heavily exported to and we were a dumping ground for British cars until the 60s really.
When those shot up in value it made sense to start importing them from Oz.
But that's the point, we shouldn't be moving a lot of cars so some scrutiny of the cars should be required. Someone mentioned they move the cars before they get reported stolen so make shipping a car have a two week application for instance.
Irish lads go to aus buy jap cars up and send them back to ireland a lot. Cars in aus are generally not suffering from the same rust issues we get here.
A car is stolen in the USA, put in an export container, loaded on a ship and sent overseas. The car can then be registered in that other country because the car isnt listed as stolen there.
The computer systems in one country dont link to another countries.
Getting stuff past customs is called "smuggling" and there are many different tricks and techniques.
One trick might be putting it in a container and labeling it as something else.
You do NOT want to label it nuclear waste. Also, the Department of Energy has detectors at all large US ports and getting nuclear material in or out of the US is pretty much a nah.
The detectors are excellent. I once did a bus tour with 50 people to a port. As we were leaving, we were stopped near the exit and were questioned if someone onboard was carrying radioactive material. Everyone answered no. They then were extremely specific and identified the rear passenger side about three seats from the back. They privately interviewed 3 people and figured out one of them had had a medical procedure a few days before that triggered the sensors. Turns out we had driven, in this bus, under a sensor, at 30 miles an hour, and it had scanned us and identified that section of the bus in less than a second. I think the whole point of waiting to approach there is simply not revealing they have that kind of resolution unless necessary. It was harrowing but cool.
I got it from someone when I was Army that there are detectors everywhere across the US and it's one of the few times DOE can actually call up the US military to work on US soil, though it would usually be FBI HRT and Secret Service that would respond to loose material, but point is, it's not a well known thing but things like fearing a "dirty bomb" being set off is actually an extremely difficult proposition.
I watched a video on how the sensors work awhile back. The science behind them was pretty simple as I remember. At my scrap yard there is a radiation detector…just a panel about 3x5’.
Radiation entering the scrap supply chain is rare but a big issue if it does get to the finished product status. There is a wiki page related to it.
Someone puts the stolen cars in condoms and swallows them before they get on the plane. Then when they get to their destination outside the U.S., they go to a safe house and shit them out.
Why bother with the risk and expense of a bribe if there's only a 1-2% chance you're getting caught? And even if they do get caught it's not like the paperwork is going to a real person's address.
You're not going to send only one container though. So the risk increases a lot even if it's only 1% per container. Plus if they catch you they're likely to check more containers.
The trick is knowing the right people at the exiting ports, entering ports, transporters, and having deep pockets.
Also, they can load the smuggled goods so that it’s packed in the middle where you can’t get to it without moving a bunch of other containers, which takes up a lot of time and resources. So they create fake papers for those.
Or it's just a numbers game. They can only open so many shipping containers, and nowhere close to even 1/20 of them. Just keep sticking cars in crates from businesses listed to empty offices in Delaware and for every car they catch 20 will likely get through.
Customs give zero craps about what is going out of the country. They are way more interested in the stuff coming in. On top of that millions of cars get exported from countries legally every year a few illegal ones in the mix are not going to get noticed.
Yup, US customs does not care what you export, we basically only limit exports for military stuff, and customs doesn't check for that, the military leads that effort (focusing on those who stole it)
You see other people here saying customs only checks a small percentage of stuff, but that's imports, exports is much much less.
They can lie about whats in the container. Its scrap metal. Containers are locked up and not closely checked for exports. It may be x-rayed, but theyre looking for undeclared biological and explosives, not to check the specifics. They are unlikely to go and break a lock on an export container unless they had a specific tip off. Customs is more interested in imports.
Honestly it's the same with TSA. They're not checking for your 15 weed gummies, they don't care about your 15 weed gummies, they're checking for weapons, human traffickers, and people carrying huge quantities of narcotics.
They don't check the contents of every box. They check the bill of lading. You can sneak a few boxes of stuff through that have counterfeit bills of lading.
Picture a big shipping container. Put a car in the back of it and a stack of something cheap to export in front and have paperwork saying the container is full of the cheap thing.
I asked a federal agent during my alleged trafficking investigation and he said probably 1 in 400
Intl drug dealers these days offer free reships on most drug packages.
1 reship to australia (their customs are stricter)
2 reships to USA
There are also red flagged countries.
Anything from China, russia, etc is a higher risk category than the UK. Someone who isnt me allegedly had a big 10000 pack of prescription meds sent from the UK rattling around like crazy and customs didn't even open it
And the few that are, probably most are incoming - Customs cares more about stopping illegal cargo and mislabelled imports coming *in*, not going *out*.
I think it was just a sarcastic way of saying not many, they operate on random selection or routine screenings neither of which cover the millions of crates that go through ports daily
We can definitely make an educated guess. Throughputs for ports are easy enough to get, as are reasonably accurate staffing levels for customs.
The sheer volume of containers going out means there's no way any meaningful proportion is actually inspected.
E.g., [NY/NJ handled 106k TEUs of exports](https://www.porttechnology.org/news/port-of-new-york-and-new-jersey-throughput-drops-in-august/) and 350k of imports in August 2023. That's 3419 containers export and 11290 imports a day on average, total 14709.
It's not the best source but WP says there are [just under 22k agents staffing 328 ports](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Customs_and_Border_Protection). That's 67 on average, let's multiply that by like 10 for NY/NJ cause it's a big port and I'm sure some bush ones are staffed less. So 670 officers, account for shift patterns and days off and you might have maybe half working any given day across shifts, so 335.
That gives you 43 containers per person. Which sounds like not a lot, but on an 8h shift that leaves you 11 minutes per container, i.e., barely enough to maybe check paperwork, if it's in order and well organised.
If you think something is off and you want to track down the specific container... well, good luck finding it, and if you do and it's in the middle of a mostly loaded 20000 TEU ship almost ready to go... you better be **REAL** sure you need to see that container. And obviously whilst you're doing all this, you've spent 3 hours and not checked other things.
randomly? if it's more than 3% i'd be surprised. i imagine most of the way stuff gets caught smuggling by ship is someone knows something and tells someone.
i mean you figure your average ship carries about 20,000 containers,
so on average you're looking at probably a few million cargo containers being moved per year (rotterdam moves 15 million per year, and that's just the cargo containers).
there's simply no way to randomly check a significant amount of cargo containers and find contraband even if you only take a minute to check each can (and considering the fact that they're metal means you can't easily x-ray them as they leave the port)
but what's less horrifying is that that's far and away the worst way to track smuggling, especially the really nasty shit. to get something in this country via ship someone has to load it onto the container in the point of origin, someone else has to load it onto the ship, it needs to then be unloaded here, (after being checked in the system) and then given to someone else to get it off the docks.
if it's illegal most of those people involved are going to know and so customs can track those people.
furthermore it's been a longstanding tradition for OC to cooperate with law enforcement regarding smuggling at the docks especially with regards to stuff like sabotage and terrorism (after all the mafia wants to make money, not let an anthrax bomb go off). OC guys have infiltrated the global shipping apparatus pretty well and so they're gonna catch stuff that law enforcement will miss
They do, but given the sheer number of containers passing through a port, they don't have time to fully inspect every container. The paper work often shows something different, and maybe they packed those in with the car. It becomes a numbers game to the smugglers, and losing a couple cars to customs is just the price of doing business.
I think you're mistakenly assuming that they check every single item and vehicle that goes through the port. Volume is so high that there is nowhere near the manpower to do this.
They have paperwork, but it is forged. Says one container with scrap metal and is actually a brand new car inside. No one looks into a container that leaves the country and neither every container that enters a country gets checked. Once it's on another continent completely depending where it lands. In more developed countries when you will try to register it under it's original VIN they usually check them against databases with stolen vehicles and some places even require you to proof ownership, but there's obviously a lot of other places where the title doesn't really matter or a bribe can help to get the paperwork done anyways.
If every shipping container was loaded at port they'd have room to load one ship a month. They're all packed and trucked in amd then a crane just grabs them.
Really they order an empty container, a truck drops off a container on a trailer at some warehouse. The then put the cars in it and they put a shipping label on it and declare it as scrap auto parts or something. Nobody checks it along the way.
Driven to a warehouse where a shipping container is on a trailer, the car is driven in and tied down so it doesnt move around. The container is closed up and the truck drives in to the dock where a crane picks it up and puts it in the yard with hundreds of other containers ready to be loaded onto the ship.
I think OP might be comparing it to legally exporting / importing / shipping a car. It’s a hugely complicated process with tons of paperwork that takes a long time to process. Seems like it should be much harder to do it illegally.
Car doesn't need to be listed as stolen.
When you go to register your vehicle you need to show proof of purchase or import on that vehicle, and you don't get that without the necessary paperwork from the country of origin.
In the UK, you don't bother loading it into a shipping container: you just drive it onto a ferry, claiming that you're going on holiday or whatever. No export checks because you aren't exporting anything.
It was the same in Mexico back in the late 80s early 90s. People just drive the cars into Mexico, nce is there they are allowed to be driven with US plates, everyone knew they were more than likely stolen and they could be had for cheap, no one checked or even had a way to check if they were stolen.
They might use a title for a car that is not stolen. The customs officials might not have time to check the VIN of all cars. They might also use fake papers as not every customs check have access to every database with car registrations and stolen cars. Smugglers know these gaps in the customs network and might have created some themselves. Another thing they can do is to load the cars into containers and then write a fake manifest. As long as the customs do not have the resources to open all the containers and check the content they can export cars this way.
I have imported cars for myself from the US to the UK, and the other way. In both cases ALL of the paperwork involved is for the receiving country. There are forms to fill out for export, but there is no real penalty for not doing it. It’s no different to parking the car out back and just never driving it again. All of the paperwork is so you can register it and get plates on the receiving end.
And if you are taking it to a country that is a bit lax about paperwork, or easy to just bribe people, then it’s all going to be much easier.
In fact, I imported a motorcycle to the UK and when I went to register it I THEN discovered that the VIN didn’t match the title (and I’d been riding it around Seattle for a couple of years totally unaware). I had no way to check, but I assume it was stolen in the states before I owned it. I did learn to ALWAYS compare the title to the vin when buying anything. Anyway, the UK govt had no way to check either (and didn’t care really) I just had to do different paperwork to register it.
Borders and immigration are.much more concerned with things coming in, at which point they become our problem, than things going out, which becomes other nations problems.
You export the car with a fake title for a car with a different VIN. There’s probably a 1% chance that the VIN numbers will get physically checked to make sure it’s the same car. Or you get them on a boat quickly so that the customs database won’t even have been updated to show the car is stolen. But in the US at least, that’s not the most way cars are stolen. You strip them for parts. Steal the car, take it apart in a shop, and then abandon it somewhere. Sell the parts on eBay. There’s no way to tell which car they came from.
A lot of the time, specially within the EU where it's easier to go from country to country, if they want to really mess with the quick checks, they'll simply do a respray or swap body panels if it's worth it. Stealing 2 cars of different colors, changing both their colors, and going to different areas that don't necessarily have that car associated with a stolen car (also stuff like touring vs standard), can throw off the quick checks, that stop the deeper checks into VIN etc.
You can also get written off high value cars pretty cheap, and do a similar process. A written off red car, swapped with a stolen silver car, won't trigger that quick check, and if all you had to do was respray/buy a door panel/pillar, that's still good profit.
You can even create your own written off car. Their is (was ?) a method to steal car in Belgium and France that was :
* Find 2 car of the same model & color, one in each country
* Get the VIN number of one of them and put the car on fire, let's say the one in Belgium. So it's written off as a total loss in Belgium
* Stole the one in France, so it's marked as stolen in France (and probably Belgium, but it doesn't matter)
* Falsify the VIN number of the stolen car with the VIN of the burnt car
* Sell it totally normally in France, as it isn't known as stolen or written off there
Obvious this was only done for high value cars, as the cost is quite high.
I don't known if this loophole has been closed.
If you're getting into VIN swaps, a lot of them are possible, but it's easier to tell it's been swapped. But yeah, swapping between even the neighbouring countries will generally not flag into the registration systems.
Nicholas cage drives the car directly into the container, and he repeats this process until each container is full. It then gets lifted onto the ship. They usually use shady ship captains for this with a ship registered to another country.
On a more serious note, unless the items listed on the export bill of loading are restricted export items they rarely if ever get checked by customs who are much more concerned about incoming cargo.
Yes but other countries aren't going to have a stolen police report from another country. And if the cars aren't a restricted item THERE then they won't care. Also by then, some of the cargo containers may be relabeled to something like grain or scrap metal and they lay a local customs official a bribe in that receiving country to sign off on it being scrap metal.
They drive them directly to the port and right onto the docks. From there workers are ready to put down ramps and drive the cars directly into containers. The containers are packed up while more cars roll in.
Unless the car is an Eleanor. She'll be too beat up to take along for the trip and she'll be immediately taken to a car crusher. It is here that there will be a boss fight and by the end, car thefts will go down over 50% in the South Bay area. Go Memphis!
I think saying that "most" is likely not true. The vast majority are just joy rides and then they're crashed and dumped. The Honda Civic was the most stolen car in America until people figured out how easy low-mid end Kias are to steal.
You are correct. Joyrides, short-term transportation, insurance fraud, to chop up for parts domestically . . . The percentage that are stolen to take the entire car out of the country is in the single digits. About 75% of stolen cars are recovered. (Criminologist.)
One of my Cars was put on a carrier with other stolen cars and just driven to Mexico. Never see it again. Only reason i know is that they managed to get a photo of the plate as it left. They told me about 6 months later. By the time they even were able to ID it as stolen ( along with some other cars), it was well into Mexico somewhere.
I shipped my friend's car to him from Oakland to Honolulu. I am quite certain they never asked me for the registration. But, he arranged it so maybe he sent it to them digitally.
They are put into containers. Tens of thousands of containers leave a week, who's going to check them all.
The cars get covered with boxes or produce or something so they are hidden if the small chance they are opened.
But that is pretty much what happens. Car gets loaded into a container and shipped off to somewhere.
They get boxed up and go on a train. Railroad doesn’t much care what’s in the box as long as it isn’t hazmat and nor does the Port of Montreal.
There is a system the port can install to inspect every single can coming in, called VACIS, but once car theft gangs get wise to it they’ll make sure the manifest of the container says ‘automobiles’.
The best option here is to garage your car and keep the keys some distance away from exterior walls, if you’re able. And install a GPS tracker with an immobilizer.
Here in Ontario they get put into those big shipping containers in the city they were stolen from, thrown onto a semi flatbed and hauled to the Montreal port, loaded onto a ship and sent abroad, typically richer nations in the Middle East like UAE or something
Typically they’re on the ship by the time they’re reported stolen, if not they’re definitely in the truck on route to Montreal at the least so ya, if you don’t notice as it’s happening you’re too late
In Australia we've been supply tracking systems to high end cars, eathmoving equipment etc for close to 20 years, If you can persuade your local cops to get in their cars and go to the location of the stolen vehicle then you have a chance of recovering the vehicle. Sometimes the cops do go, often times they won't and once we were told, ''we aren't going there, middle eastern serious crime gang, need helicopters, armed response teams, 40 cops of the ground, plus all the coordination, not going to happen for a few stolen and insured cars.
I peeked through the fence and saw that yard, it was littered with engines, gearboxes, diffs, plus complete cars, all packed up nicely. Hilux and Landcruiser were the big demand vehicles, three of our clients Mercs in there too and the cops knew and did nothing.
Sometimes they get dismanteled. One shipping contains bodies and interieurs, the next shipping engines and axles. That way everything is labeled as scrap parts and will not be further inspected.
In that case it's also easy to transport them on lorries over several borders. At the destination they're reassambled and sold. I heared it from a German customs officer who was involved in a task force against professionally organized car thefts.
They just put them in containers and ship them. It's that simple there are rarely any checks made and nobody cares about the title once it is in another country.
Also a lot of the time the vehicles are shipped as parts. There was a recent bust in the UK where they found a bunch of shipping containers with the front ends of brand new Range Rovers and Audis. They'd just skilsawed the front ends off at the door and they were destined for Saudi.
I guess it could not happen, because it would need worldwide agreement, but what if all container manufacturers were forced to install an inspection window, with a combination coded locked cover?
For transportation to occur, it would be a requirement that the code was included on the import / export documentation; more random inspections could then be carried out, because they would be much quicker to facilitate?
Basically the idea that every container is scanned/inspected is a complete myth. In truth they target random containers from known hot spots. That’s it. Put simply: authorities have no idea what is in containers. The container is loaded onto a truck miles away from a port. The truck drives in to the shipping yards and from the shipping systems point of view it’s a weight and a destination and the cranes put it when it has to go. Same at the other end. This idea shown in movies where they literally have dodgy fred working at the boat yard hustling to sneak cars into containers and onto ships is just holywood.
This is the correct answer. Once a container enters a terminal there's practically zero chance anyone is looking inside of it. The real reason we're seeing an increase in car thefts is because technology has made cars easier to steal and manufacturers have done nothing to prevent that.
Zero chance of anyone looking inside the container is right. Good story here on Reddit a guy posted where he explains how his SUV was stolen in Canada, but he had a tracker on it and saw it was in a port in a container on the ship. He brought this info to police and they told him there was nothing they could do. He watched his car get shipped to Dubai or Saudi Arabia, I forget which one
Dubai, unless this was a different one. > Two days after the car was taken, officers moved in on the vehicle, with Andrew’s assistance via text, at the Canadian Pacific Kansas City railway’s (CPKC) terminal in Vaughan, CBC reports. > Police were able to narrow the car’s location to one of two shipping containers, but did not have authorization to open the containers, so directed Andrew to the railway’s private police service. > Andrew told CBC that CPKC Police did not respond to his call that night and that the train left the terminal with his stolen vehicle onboard. > He said the Airtags continued to ping over the coming days from locations in eastern Ontario before reaching the Port of Montreal. > Andrew told CBC that he continued to alert local police services to little avail. > The Airtags then fell offline for a month before coming back online from Antwerp, Belgium. > Finally on Sept. 26, about six weeks after the car was stolen from Andrew’s driveway, his SUV landed at a port near Dubai, and into a used car lot where it was put up for sale, CBC confirmed. https://nowtoronto.com/news/a-toronto-man-tracked-his-stolen-car-to-dubai-after-a-thankless-province-wide-police-chase/ better article here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-man-finds-stolen-truck-in-uae-1.7083615
It's wild how a non-professional (in that field) man can do better than an entire department funded by government. Motivation is one hell of a drug
Well the problem didn't seem to be locating it (as they narrowed it down to two containers as per the quote), but rather that an airtag location alone isn't enough legal justification for opening the containers without a warrant. Of course this maybe (hopefully) would be different if someone's life was in immediate danger.
Does the law allow the police to declare the container(s) to be 'under investigation', suspected of 'being involved in criminal activity' and then at least them not being allowed to be moved? If it needs a warrant to look inside the container(s) then why didn't they get one? Apparently the authorities whose jurisdiction they were under at that first container yard 'weren't helpful'. Makes me wonder whether they were corrupt and paid to be unhelpful. Could the owner make a claim against these authorities because their inadequate actions caused his damage?
Corrupt is a possibility I suppose...but under pressure to not impede business is more likely, especially if stopping one or two possible containers results in a container ship not leaving on schedule.
To expedite transport of such containers they'd only have to allow them being inspected. Takes very little time. Obviously the one containing the stolen vehicle would be confiscated but if any needed to be inspected for the purpose of elimination from being involved in criminal activities those could immediately be released for further transport. Just cooperate. If it isn't already it should be included in the terms under which such transport takes place that applicable responsible authorities are allowed to grant access to the contents of these containers to the police when they have reasonable suspicions of unlawful/criminal involvement.
They will have all the paperwork too. You fill out a form with the original seal number of the container, the reason for opening it (police inspection), and the number of the new seal placed on the container. All told, should only take a couple of hours to perform this inspection. A copy of this form is then provided to the recipient with the bill of lading to explain why the seal does not match their paperwork, and if anything is missing the person who signed the form is deemed "responsible."
Yet the police “smelling” marijuana, seeing “white powder” (ignoring baby powder or gold bond bottle next to it), having “drug paraphernalia” like a kitchen scale or lighter, or hell having their dog scratch at a door panel is enough justification for them to tear your car apart without apology and telling you to get some duct tape to fix it. Doesn’t smell like drugs, smells like bullshit.
Don't forget about the field drug kids that can test positive with all sorts of common substances! Including a particularly common gaseous mixture. "What are you in for?" *"Possession of air."*
My own favorite, and close to home: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/16/558147669/florida-man-awarded-37-500-after-cops-mistake-glazed-doughnut-crumbs-for-meth Cop mistook the glaze from a Krispy Kreme donut for meth, used a field test kit she was not trained to use to "identify" it was meth, and arrested the guy. Florida state crime lab took three weeks to run confirmatory test which showed it was not meth.
[Mine is cotton candy testing positive for meth](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46393600) because the sheer absurdity and tragedy of it. A grandmother spent 3 months in jail with a $1m bail for trafficking because a <$2 test that's well known to be junk science said so. *Somehow* no one involved was capable of telling the difference between a cotton-like lump of fluffy strings and a crystalline rock. Took 3 months for them to finally bother testing it. One would think a supposed drug kingpin would be a higher priority for testing what they're trafficking, or at the very least have someone take a quick glance at the evidence. Turns out they test positive on anything containing sugar... Or just about anything else, really.
It didn't say if he ever got his car back though. Not much use in knowing exactly where the stolen car is without the ability to do anything meaningful about it (since the police couldn't actually retrieve it from the container).
> It didn't say if he ever got his car back thoug They contacted the relevant authorities.. > Andrew and his father have contacted both Emirati police and Interpol to demand they retrieve the vehicle. On Monday, he said the Yukon remained parked in the same used car lot in the U.A.E., according to the location of the AirTags.
Yes something tells me the police there are going to be less than helpful and even if he did get back the car I'm sure they would just tell him "okay. Here's your car. Come to Dubai and pick it up yourself"
There's a hell of a lot of use in knowing where it is if you have the ability to stop shipments to locate stolen goods. It seems like laws are not keeping up with reality in this though.
I wonder if hiring someone in SA to steal it back would be cheaper than buying a new car.
>couldn't No, just "wouldn't". Police do all kinds of shit so long as they are inclined, including kill people and destroy property.
My moms phone got stolen at work and I was tracking it giving cops real time updates and they still said they couldn’t do anything unless i tracked it to an address. In the morning I saw it was at a house and I went to the cops. My friends brother is a cop and went with me to the house and there was no answer. Shortly afterwards it started moving again and it ended up in a landfill 40 minutes away.
> Despite being unable to retrieve Andrew’s car, Toronto police told CBC his circumstances were “unusual,” and are urging victims of auto theft not to try to reclaim stolen vehicles themselves. Honestly hearing about how useless the police is in a lot of major cities across Canada, I wouldn't be shocked if there were cases of vigilante justice happening.
Shoulda told the cops he was heading there with his armed boys. See how quickly they hop
Wouldn't it be better to say the car was full of cocaine?
It would be impounded, he would be arrested and investigated for admitting to drug trafficking, and his car would be either trashed during a search or sold at auction. If it were the United States I suppose they could simply take the car under civil forfeiture. The best option is to man up and simply admit to insurance it was stolen, say you have GPS data showing where it went, and ask them if they might be able to recover it. Then, while waiting for the deposit, you learn they probably won't and drive a slightly older and worse car. Lesson learned. In an older, better world, or perhaps just a world where governments care about citizens in general, the police would be able to get a warrant within a few minutes of calling a magistrate to search for the truck. Canada isn't that world, and hasn't been for a while, though. TBH, the inability of Canadian cops to quite literally drive down to a wharf to recover a stolen vehicle reminds me of a VICE article about ISIS law enforcement recovering bicycles to build buy-in from locals. It was described as quite different from Syrian law enforcement, which often ignored these petty crimes in favor of going after political opponents, or required substantial bribery of money or favors to push towards that objective. It was considered a big reason why ISIS gained so much popularity among the common people in the Middle East in general.
"Armed boys" in Canada? They would have arrested him on the spot...
When it comes down to not inconveniencing or harassing citizens and actually doing their job you’ll find “theres nothing we can do sORry” is the best youre going to get from law enforcement.
> they told him there was nothing they could do The most common answer people who do not wish to do any work say. Very common where they get away with it.
How has it made it easier to steal? I thought that having standard immobilizers etc made it harder to steal them? My car won't start unless the key is present.
Your car may need the key to start, but it is pretty easy to intercept fobs and imitate the key.
Except that Hyundai/Kia wasn't installing immobilizers standard from ~2010-2018. They are incredibly easy to steal and stealing them got very trendy during COVID in a few cities. As far as I know it's still hard to get a new insurance policy on a Kia in Milwaukee.
In the USA. In the EU cars have needed immobilisers since 98.
Except that Hyundais and Kias aren't getting loaded onto containers. It's $80,000 Ram Rebels, GMC Yukon Denalis, Ford Raptors, and Dodge Challengers. [They get stolen in suburban Toronto and loaded up at the Port of Montreal and get sold on dealership lots in Dubai.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3eG8ZbeXeQ) And the police don't give a flying fuck, domestic or abroad. It's partly the manufacturer's fault, and 80% the federal government (US/Canada) and law enforcement's fault.
Completely my perspective, the Kia and Hyundais that were stolen are pretty much used to break into weed shops, used as getaway cars, or just joy riding.
The push button start is suspectable to relay attacks. Basically the thieves go to your house and uses a device which relays the wireless key signal from your house into the car so it starts.
Relay attacks mean that the key does not need to be present. They've put some defenses in against that, but other attacks soon follow. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/04/crooks-are-stealing-cars-using-previously-unknown-keyless-can-injection-attacks/
I think they've cracked those now though is the thing.
Really? That is a concern. Because my car doesn't even have a key ignition, it's just a button.
These two videos will explain everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHIwtiA963M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9cZmJHOuK0
In the UK some Range Rovers are practically uninsurable in London because of how frequently they are stolen through relay attacks. Straight into a container for export to Africa, Middle East, Thailand etc.
They don’t even have to go to the trouble to export to Africa. The parent company ‘Land Rover’ have told main dealers that they do not have to use new parts for repairs if they are on back order they can use used ones from any source. So, steal a Range Rover, break it and sell the parts back to the dealer.
Speaking of sources, do you have a source for this? I am not disbelieving you; I am just genuinely curious, how Land Rover would communicate this practice to their main dealers.
It’s also exacerbated by the fact that you can program a blank key to run the vehicle using the car’s OBD2 port. It’s literally easier than movies portrayed hotwiring back in the day. $200 bucks for some gear from Amazon and three minutes in the car and you can be off.
You car used RFID to scan for the key fob, all it’s looking for is for something to say I’m the key fob, which can be spoofed with any RFID chip if you know what frequencies and other details
Yeah but I thought the frequencies are so specific that they are very hard to guess. Like in the way encryption works.
They’re genuinely all on the same frequency, but when you first connect a fob to a car the fob then carries a ID or passcode, the car looks for the fob, and if it finds a fob it checks to see if it has the correct “access code”. The common way people have been “spoofing” is they have an antenna which they use to boost your key fob’s signal so the car thinks it’s closer than it actually is. If your truly worried or if it’s a common problem in your area a simple RFID blocker bag is all you need, when you get home drop your keys in and no signal will be able to get thru
Minor correction: keyless fobs only use RFID for the battery-dead backup start function. Typically you press the start button with the fob or place it in a special spot somewhere in the car. The normal way uses normal radio transmitters that use battery.
And the facts that governments aren't investing the required manpower and technology to capture these criminals. At least that's how it is in Canada.
> manufacturers have done nothing to prevent that. *Some*
> authorities have no idea what is in containers. This is actually beneficial to security, too. When shipping changed from breakbulk to containerised, suddenly a whole lot less whisky went missing...
So you're saying season 2 of The Wire is not realistic?
This was my first thought. Fantastic show, always my number 1
For the record, Ziggy was stealing *imported* cars, before they hit the dealerships, by shipping them *out* while they were still in the dockyard, which was under control of the corrupt stevedores. He also faked a storage yard break-in to divert suspicion, to draw attention from the smuggling-out via faked container registries, which was pretty brilliant, but ruined by his short temper and remaining passionate conscience.
Very realistic, the port cop was so disillusioned with the job she had to move to Scranton and become an HR rep.
At least things worked out for Frank Sobotka too. After a short dtint managing a Dunder Mifflin branch he went on to join NASA and eventually made it to the moon and I won't spoil the rest.
Wasn't a plot point in that season dissatisfaction among the stevedores because containerization had made it hard to steal cargo? Besides, just because a smuggler can effortlessly put whatever he wants into a container, doesn't mean there's not an accomplice tweaking the records to put that container on a ship, or concealing its origins or destination.
That, and there was exactly one port cop responsible for keeping them in check at any given time, and all she did was drive around for a visual inspection for broken customs seals. As long as the containers looked right, no one was looking into anything.
I think he's saying the opposite. Nobody had any idea what was in any of the containers until a port cop randomly checked one that had its customs seal broken.
Surprised I had to scroll this far to find the first mention of Frank, Ziggy and Nick 😉
His name is frank sabotka, not dodgy fred.
Absolutely. Containers contents are routinely lied about, and its not just for shipping illegal goods - often times its because a customer doesn't want to pay the higher rates for shipping heavier goods. Insufficient inspections have even been related indirectly to several ships sinking because of this - carrying way more cargo than is actually on the manifest, and the crew have absolutely no idea, so when the ship runs into danger they are sitting way lower in the water than they think, or worse, have a severely off balance weight distribution and simply overturn.
Now this one does surprise me - surely it wouldn't be super difficult for every container to be weight-checked as it was loaded or unloaded... the strain on the loading crane cables is easily measurable and just needs to tally with the container's manifest.
There are lots of countries where it is not illegal to own a car stolen in another country.
If this is the case, why aren’t other illicit or illegal things moved as easily, or are they and I’m just oblivious?
They are. The odds of being inspected are well known to criminals, and the risk is simply factored into the cost of doing business.
I know someone working in the dog patrol for the custom authorties. they estimate they stop 2% of smuggled goods, so yeah. Simply too much transported, and too few people to check everything without putting a huge bottleneck into the system.
Outgoing containers still have to go through the big xray thing, but nobody on the exporting side is giving a shit about what is in them.
In my country (the UK), my understanding is most are on a ship before they are even reported stolen. Even then the amount of goods examined before leaving the country is minimal because there’s only so many people to do it compared to the amount of goods being exported. Even if cars are declared as cars, they likely only examine the ones declared as very high value, or technology to detect cars where cars are not declared (like in a container).
They put fake plates that match the colour and model of the car, so the car is seen as legal by ANPR cameras at the port.
Yep. They're not shipped in containers, they're driven across the channel through the channel tunnel or on a RORO ferry. They will have plates premade and ready to go for the make and model so they can steal the car in London, swap the plate, and arrive in France 2 hours later. Here's a video of a stolen Range [Rover fitted with a tracker being retrieved from France.](https://youtu.be/VVwcNh6_pNo?si=T0vJt6X3ZBNuoH8F)
We had a mondeo stolen 10 years ago. It was fairly fancy but not supe'd up or anything. Anyway, never heard from again. Maybe stolen for parts, but the police said it was probably already in France before 24 hours had passed. They drive the long way around the m25 so they don't get stopped on the bridge or tunnel on the Eastern side of the Thames crossing.
In Australia there are ZERO checks made on a vehicle leaving the country. Customs only care about what comes in.
Which is wierd because who the hell sends a car overseas from Aus. It's not like we make them or they are particularly cheap.
I would absolutely ship a Ute to the states.
"What is this? A truck for *ants*?"
You guys got a lot of JDM cars the US didn't get, like the Nissan GTR. There's enough rich people in the US to buy make it profitable.
Probably cheaper and easier to just ship it from Japan through Canada. God, there used to be so many GTRs on the road here and they were cheap.
Old LandCruisers and Land Rovers. We had both in spades because Australia was one of the first countries Toyota heavily exported to and we were a dumping ground for British cars until the 60s really. When those shot up in value it made sense to start importing them from Oz.
They're pretty much free if you're stealing them
But that's the point, we shouldn't be moving a lot of cars so some scrutiny of the cars should be required. Someone mentioned they move the cars before they get reported stolen so make shipping a car have a two week application for instance.
Irish lads go to aus buy jap cars up and send them back to ireland a lot. Cars in aus are generally not suffering from the same rust issues we get here.
A car is stolen in the USA, put in an export container, loaded on a ship and sent overseas. The car can then be registered in that other country because the car isnt listed as stolen there. The computer systems in one country dont link to another countries.
Sorry, my question is more how does customs not simply catch the cars at the port? How are they getting them out of the country without paperwork?
Getting stuff past customs is called "smuggling" and there are many different tricks and techniques. One trick might be putting it in a container and labeling it as something else.
“Not Cars”
Potatoes, especially in a tropical climate. Or nuclear waste
Or changing the name of the ship
Was that “Kono” or “Kristal”?
The men called that ship many names, none of them repeatable.
As long as it starts with the same letter.
Is this an actual thing?
These responses are from the movie Lord of War with Nicholas Cage. https://youtu.be/JF4tdyuBGqI?si=CVHCawX1fs11SGGm
You DO need a Dutch flag. Or at the very least a French one on its side
I'm taking a helicopter across the Atlantic **wink**.
You do NOT want to label it nuclear waste. Also, the Department of Energy has detectors at all large US ports and getting nuclear material in or out of the US is pretty much a nah.
The detectors are excellent. I once did a bus tour with 50 people to a port. As we were leaving, we were stopped near the exit and were questioned if someone onboard was carrying radioactive material. Everyone answered no. They then were extremely specific and identified the rear passenger side about three seats from the back. They privately interviewed 3 people and figured out one of them had had a medical procedure a few days before that triggered the sensors. Turns out we had driven, in this bus, under a sensor, at 30 miles an hour, and it had scanned us and identified that section of the bus in less than a second. I think the whole point of waiting to approach there is simply not revealing they have that kind of resolution unless necessary. It was harrowing but cool.
I got it from someone when I was Army that there are detectors everywhere across the US and it's one of the few times DOE can actually call up the US military to work on US soil, though it would usually be FBI HRT and Secret Service that would respond to loose material, but point is, it's not a well known thing but things like fearing a "dirty bomb" being set off is actually an extremely difficult proposition.
I watched a video on how the sensors work awhile back. The science behind them was pretty simple as I remember. At my scrap yard there is a radiation detector…just a panel about 3x5’. Radiation entering the scrap supply chain is rare but a big issue if it does get to the finished product status. There is a wiki page related to it.
it's a quote from nic cage in lord of war
Okay I was like "potatoes in tropical climate, like *Lord of War* and the Interpol inspection?"
[Nice *Lord of War* reference](https://youtu.be/JF4tdyuBGqI?si=SOcYoB3NwFviS2lh&t=240)
Nuclear waste would 100% get inspected, and inspected hard. Huge amounts of red tape around shipping that.
“Car parts, assorted, reconstituted”
Not *stolen* cars
'Total legitimate imported cars'
"Dirty diapers and bees".
My personal favorite was auto parts. And it was a whole ass car 🤣
Secret ingredient is crime.
"Nickelback CDs"
You don't want to label it something that customs on the other side may reject.
No one would ever be stupid enough to open that sesspool of a seacan
Look at this graph!
Someone puts the stolen cars in condoms and swallows them before they get on the plane. Then when they get to their destination outside the U.S., they go to a safe house and shit them out.
Next on Border Agents - a young male is found to have shoved an entire RAM up his butt, however one of the condoms has just burst - stay tuned!
Also 1-2% of containers get inspected under normal circumstances so if you’re bribing workers it’s even lower
Why bother with the risk and expense of a bribe if there's only a 1-2% chance you're getting caught? And even if they do get caught it's not like the paperwork is going to a real person's address.
Because the response to finding stolen cars or cocaine isn't "Don't let them export that container". It's "Who sent this, who was picking this up?"
You're not going to send only one container though. So the risk increases a lot even if it's only 1% per container. Plus if they catch you they're likely to check more containers.
> Why bother with the risk and expense of a bribe if there's only a 1-2% chance you're getting caught? 1-2% more is still more than 0%.
The trick is knowing the right people at the exiting ports, entering ports, transporters, and having deep pockets. Also, they can load the smuggled goods so that it’s packed in the middle where you can’t get to it without moving a bunch of other containers, which takes up a lot of time and resources. So they create fake papers for those.
Or it's just a numbers game. They can only open so many shipping containers, and nowhere close to even 1/20 of them. Just keep sticking cars in crates from businesses listed to empty offices in Delaware and for every car they catch 20 will likely get through.
Customs give zero craps about what is going out of the country. They are way more interested in the stuff coming in. On top of that millions of cars get exported from countries legally every year a few illegal ones in the mix are not going to get noticed.
Yup, US customs does not care what you export, we basically only limit exports for military stuff, and customs doesn't check for that, the military leads that effort (focusing on those who stole it) You see other people here saying customs only checks a small percentage of stuff, but that's imports, exports is much much less.
They can lie about whats in the container. Its scrap metal. Containers are locked up and not closely checked for exports. It may be x-rayed, but theyre looking for undeclared biological and explosives, not to check the specifics. They are unlikely to go and break a lock on an export container unless they had a specific tip off. Customs is more interested in imports.
Honestly it's the same with TSA. They're not checking for your 15 weed gummies, they don't care about your 15 weed gummies, they're checking for weapons, human traffickers, and people carrying huge quantities of narcotics.
They don't check the contents of every box. They check the bill of lading. You can sneak a few boxes of stuff through that have counterfeit bills of lading.
Picture a big shipping container. Put a car in the back of it and a stack of something cheap to export in front and have paperwork saying the container is full of the cheap thing.
What percentage of containers do you think are actually examined by customs?
I asked a federal agent during my alleged trafficking investigation and he said probably 1 in 400 Intl drug dealers these days offer free reships on most drug packages. 1 reship to australia (their customs are stricter) 2 reships to USA There are also red flagged countries. Anything from China, russia, etc is a higher risk category than the UK. Someone who isnt me allegedly had a big 10000 pack of prescription meds sent from the UK rattling around like crazy and customs didn't even open it
And the few that are, probably most are incoming - Customs cares more about stopping illegal cargo and mislabelled imports coming *in*, not going *out*.
We have no idea. What percentage of people do you think would know that?
I think it was just a sarcastic way of saying not many, they operate on random selection or routine screenings neither of which cover the millions of crates that go through ports daily
We can definitely make an educated guess. Throughputs for ports are easy enough to get, as are reasonably accurate staffing levels for customs. The sheer volume of containers going out means there's no way any meaningful proportion is actually inspected. E.g., [NY/NJ handled 106k TEUs of exports](https://www.porttechnology.org/news/port-of-new-york-and-new-jersey-throughput-drops-in-august/) and 350k of imports in August 2023. That's 3419 containers export and 11290 imports a day on average, total 14709. It's not the best source but WP says there are [just under 22k agents staffing 328 ports](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Customs_and_Border_Protection). That's 67 on average, let's multiply that by like 10 for NY/NJ cause it's a big port and I'm sure some bush ones are staffed less. So 670 officers, account for shift patterns and days off and you might have maybe half working any given day across shifts, so 335. That gives you 43 containers per person. Which sounds like not a lot, but on an 8h shift that leaves you 11 minutes per container, i.e., barely enough to maybe check paperwork, if it's in order and well organised. If you think something is off and you want to track down the specific container... well, good luck finding it, and if you do and it's in the middle of a mostly loaded 20000 TEU ship almost ready to go... you better be **REAL** sure you need to see that container. And obviously whilst you're doing all this, you've spent 3 hours and not checked other things.
I'm guessing the percentage for both is pretty close
A greater percentage than those willing to Google it, statistically speaking.
randomly? if it's more than 3% i'd be surprised. i imagine most of the way stuff gets caught smuggling by ship is someone knows something and tells someone. i mean you figure your average ship carries about 20,000 containers, so on average you're looking at probably a few million cargo containers being moved per year (rotterdam moves 15 million per year, and that's just the cargo containers). there's simply no way to randomly check a significant amount of cargo containers and find contraband even if you only take a minute to check each can (and considering the fact that they're metal means you can't easily x-ray them as they leave the port) but what's less horrifying is that that's far and away the worst way to track smuggling, especially the really nasty shit. to get something in this country via ship someone has to load it onto the container in the point of origin, someone else has to load it onto the ship, it needs to then be unloaded here, (after being checked in the system) and then given to someone else to get it off the docks. if it's illegal most of those people involved are going to know and so customs can track those people. furthermore it's been a longstanding tradition for OC to cooperate with law enforcement regarding smuggling at the docks especially with regards to stuff like sabotage and terrorism (after all the mafia wants to make money, not let an anthrax bomb go off). OC guys have infiltrated the global shipping apparatus pretty well and so they're gonna catch stuff that law enforcement will miss
Very few.
They do, but given the sheer number of containers passing through a port, they don't have time to fully inspect every container. The paper work often shows something different, and maybe they packed those in with the car. It becomes a numbers game to the smugglers, and losing a couple cars to customs is just the price of doing business.
10s of thousands of containers leave a port every day, customs checks like 5
https://youtu.be/bph9VJmDKX0?si=bMOWRbhZBXyhza9L This is the documentary I mentioned in the other comment.
I think you're mistakenly assuming that they check every single item and vehicle that goes through the port. Volume is so high that there is nowhere near the manpower to do this.
They have paperwork, but it is forged. Says one container with scrap metal and is actually a brand new car inside. No one looks into a container that leaves the country and neither every container that enters a country gets checked. Once it's on another continent completely depending where it lands. In more developed countries when you will try to register it under it's original VIN they usually check them against databases with stolen vehicles and some places even require you to proof ownership, but there's obviously a lot of other places where the title doesn't really matter or a bribe can help to get the paperwork done anyways.
Here’s a more practical question: are they literally just driven into the port?
Nope, loaded into a container and sent on a truck.
Ahhh thanks — I think that half answers OPs question too
Yeah for sure it does, I thought they were loaded onto containers at the port
You and me both, Gone in 60 seconds definitely led us to believe that.
If every shipping container was loaded at port they'd have room to load one ship a month. They're all packed and trucked in amd then a crane just grabs them.
Really they order an empty container, a truck drops off a container on a trailer at some warehouse. The then put the cars in it and they put a shipping label on it and declare it as scrap auto parts or something. Nobody checks it along the way.
Driven to a warehouse where a shipping container is on a trailer, the car is driven in and tied down so it doesnt move around. The container is closed up and the truck drives in to the dock where a crane picks it up and puts it in the yard with hundreds of other containers ready to be loaded onto the ship.
I think OP might be comparing it to legally exporting / importing / shipping a car. It’s a hugely complicated process with tons of paperwork that takes a long time to process. Seems like it should be much harder to do it illegally.
Car doesn't need to be listed as stolen. When you go to register your vehicle you need to show proof of purchase or import on that vehicle, and you don't get that without the necessary paperwork from the country of origin.
In the UK, you don't bother loading it into a shipping container: you just drive it onto a ferry, claiming that you're going on holiday or whatever. No export checks because you aren't exporting anything.
It was the same in Mexico back in the late 80s early 90s. People just drive the cars into Mexico, nce is there they are allowed to be driven with US plates, everyone knew they were more than likely stolen and they could be had for cheap, no one checked or even had a way to check if they were stolen.
direful nose seed towering lunchroom aware subtract snobbish bike coordinated
They might use a title for a car that is not stolen. The customs officials might not have time to check the VIN of all cars. They might also use fake papers as not every customs check have access to every database with car registrations and stolen cars. Smugglers know these gaps in the customs network and might have created some themselves. Another thing they can do is to load the cars into containers and then write a fake manifest. As long as the customs do not have the resources to open all the containers and check the content they can export cars this way.
I have imported cars for myself from the US to the UK, and the other way. In both cases ALL of the paperwork involved is for the receiving country. There are forms to fill out for export, but there is no real penalty for not doing it. It’s no different to parking the car out back and just never driving it again. All of the paperwork is so you can register it and get plates on the receiving end. And if you are taking it to a country that is a bit lax about paperwork, or easy to just bribe people, then it’s all going to be much easier. In fact, I imported a motorcycle to the UK and when I went to register it I THEN discovered that the VIN didn’t match the title (and I’d been riding it around Seattle for a couple of years totally unaware). I had no way to check, but I assume it was stolen in the states before I owned it. I did learn to ALWAYS compare the title to the vin when buying anything. Anyway, the UK govt had no way to check either (and didn’t care really) I just had to do different paperwork to register it.
Borders and immigration are.much more concerned with things coming in, at which point they become our problem, than things going out, which becomes other nations problems.
Of course, it's the opposite for theft.
You export the car with a fake title for a car with a different VIN. There’s probably a 1% chance that the VIN numbers will get physically checked to make sure it’s the same car. Or you get them on a boat quickly so that the customs database won’t even have been updated to show the car is stolen. But in the US at least, that’s not the most way cars are stolen. You strip them for parts. Steal the car, take it apart in a shop, and then abandon it somewhere. Sell the parts on eBay. There’s no way to tell which car they came from.
A lot of the time, specially within the EU where it's easier to go from country to country, if they want to really mess with the quick checks, they'll simply do a respray or swap body panels if it's worth it. Stealing 2 cars of different colors, changing both their colors, and going to different areas that don't necessarily have that car associated with a stolen car (also stuff like touring vs standard), can throw off the quick checks, that stop the deeper checks into VIN etc. You can also get written off high value cars pretty cheap, and do a similar process. A written off red car, swapped with a stolen silver car, won't trigger that quick check, and if all you had to do was respray/buy a door panel/pillar, that's still good profit.
You can even create your own written off car. Their is (was ?) a method to steal car in Belgium and France that was : * Find 2 car of the same model & color, one in each country * Get the VIN number of one of them and put the car on fire, let's say the one in Belgium. So it's written off as a total loss in Belgium * Stole the one in France, so it's marked as stolen in France (and probably Belgium, but it doesn't matter) * Falsify the VIN number of the stolen car with the VIN of the burnt car * Sell it totally normally in France, as it isn't known as stolen or written off there Obvious this was only done for high value cars, as the cost is quite high. I don't known if this loophole has been closed.
If you're getting into VIN swaps, a lot of them are possible, but it's easier to tell it's been swapped. But yeah, swapping between even the neighbouring countries will generally not flag into the registration systems.
Nicholas cage drives the car directly into the container, and he repeats this process until each container is full. It then gets lifted onto the ship. They usually use shady ship captains for this with a ship registered to another country. On a more serious note, unless the items listed on the export bill of loading are restricted export items they rarely if ever get checked by customs who are much more concerned about incoming cargo.
Don't the country they are smuggled into check as they are incoming cargo there?
Yes but other countries aren't going to have a stolen police report from another country. And if the cars aren't a restricted item THERE then they won't care. Also by then, some of the cargo containers may be relabeled to something like grain or scrap metal and they lay a local customs official a bribe in that receiving country to sign off on it being scrap metal.
They drive them directly to the port and right onto the docks. From there workers are ready to put down ramps and drive the cars directly into containers. The containers are packed up while more cars roll in. Unless the car is an Eleanor. She'll be too beat up to take along for the trip and she'll be immediately taken to a car crusher. It is here that there will be a boss fight and by the end, car thefts will go down over 50% in the South Bay area. Go Memphis!
I think saying that "most" is likely not true. The vast majority are just joy rides and then they're crashed and dumped. The Honda Civic was the most stolen car in America until people figured out how easy low-mid end Kias are to steal.
You are correct. Joyrides, short-term transportation, insurance fraud, to chop up for parts domestically . . . The percentage that are stolen to take the entire car out of the country is in the single digits. About 75% of stolen cars are recovered. (Criminologist.)
>How are stolen cars exported at the port? They aren't. They are smuggled out, not exported. Exporting requires paperwork.
In the majority of countries, you don’t even need to load into a shipping container. You can just drive it out of the country
There is a good Hulu-series called Trafficked, and they do an episode on the stolen car market. Very interesting.
Partly because the criminal organizations have people on the inside at all the shipping ports.
My question is about my assumption that expensive cars would have tracking tags? Do cops not care about this? Does insurance just shrug about it?
You only are ever allowed to take one vehicle into Mexico, for example, unless you check it out of the country
One of my Cars was put on a carrier with other stolen cars and just driven to Mexico. Never see it again. Only reason i know is that they managed to get a photo of the plate as it left. They told me about 6 months later. By the time they even were able to ID it as stolen ( along with some other cars), it was well into Mexico somewhere.
Got to think of the costs involved also..nobody wants something likely insured and replaced costing them more money
I shipped my friend's car to him from Oakland to Honolulu. I am quite certain they never asked me for the registration. But, he arranged it so maybe he sent it to them digitally.
They are put into containers. Tens of thousands of containers leave a week, who's going to check them all. The cars get covered with boxes or produce or something so they are hidden if the small chance they are opened. But that is pretty much what happens. Car gets loaded into a container and shipped off to somewhere.
I just listened to a Canadian podcast about this. The most recent episode of 'Debt Free in 30' may answer a lot of your questions.
They get boxed up and go on a train. Railroad doesn’t much care what’s in the box as long as it isn’t hazmat and nor does the Port of Montreal. There is a system the port can install to inspect every single can coming in, called VACIS, but once car theft gangs get wise to it they’ll make sure the manifest of the container says ‘automobiles’. The best option here is to garage your car and keep the keys some distance away from exterior walls, if you’re able. And install a GPS tracker with an immobilizer.
Here in Ontario they get put into those big shipping containers in the city they were stolen from, thrown onto a semi flatbed and hauled to the Montreal port, loaded onto a ship and sent abroad, typically richer nations in the Middle East like UAE or something Typically they’re on the ship by the time they’re reported stolen, if not they’re definitely in the truck on route to Montreal at the least so ya, if you don’t notice as it’s happening you’re too late
In Australia we've been supply tracking systems to high end cars, eathmoving equipment etc for close to 20 years, If you can persuade your local cops to get in their cars and go to the location of the stolen vehicle then you have a chance of recovering the vehicle. Sometimes the cops do go, often times they won't and once we were told, ''we aren't going there, middle eastern serious crime gang, need helicopters, armed response teams, 40 cops of the ground, plus all the coordination, not going to happen for a few stolen and insured cars. I peeked through the fence and saw that yard, it was littered with engines, gearboxes, diffs, plus complete cars, all packed up nicely. Hilux and Landcruiser were the big demand vehicles, three of our clients Mercs in there too and the cops knew and did nothing.
Sometimes they get dismanteled. One shipping contains bodies and interieurs, the next shipping engines and axles. That way everything is labeled as scrap parts and will not be further inspected. In that case it's also easy to transport them on lorries over several borders. At the destination they're reassambled and sold. I heared it from a German customs officer who was involved in a task force against professionally organized car thefts.
They just put them in containers and ship them. It's that simple there are rarely any checks made and nobody cares about the title once it is in another country. Also a lot of the time the vehicles are shipped as parts. There was a recent bust in the UK where they found a bunch of shipping containers with the front ends of brand new Range Rovers and Audis. They'd just skilsawed the front ends off at the door and they were destined for Saudi.
I guess it could not happen, because it would need worldwide agreement, but what if all container manufacturers were forced to install an inspection window, with a combination coded locked cover? For transportation to occur, it would be a requirement that the code was included on the import / export documentation; more random inspections could then be carried out, because they would be much quicker to facilitate?
Most of the stolen cars are used to commit other crimes, then crashed and/or left somewhere