Len Cutter woke one morning earlier this year to find his late-model Honda Civic had some reconstructive work done. The rear window was laying, broken, across the rear seats, although nothing inside the car was taken. As it turns out, the thieves were after his roof rack.
“They’re going to break into my car and steal a roof rack?” he said. “Gimme a break.”
Cutter, of Long Beach, California, fell victim to a common trend in auto thievery: components are now more attractive than the car itself.
Vehicles are getting harder to steal outright, especially given massive advances in anti-theft technology (current hi-tech keys won’t even allow you to turn the engine over unless the right microchip is present, moving hotwiring into the realm of cultural artifact). As a result, car thieves are stealing components such as GPS devices, DVD systems, rims and tires and, indeed, roof racks, rather than the whole vehicle. Yet, as cars become more futuristic, some old trends are returning. Here are the top trends in auto knavery that you need to keep in mind:
1. Odometer Fraud
Amid so many technological advances, the full digitization of the dashboard has had an effect on odometers. Odometer rollbacks are “back in a big way,” said Christopher Basso of Carfax. “There is widespread use of digital odometers. People are getting software off the internet rather than cracking open the dash and hand-cranking back the odometer. It’s harder to detect as there are no physical signs the vehicle has been tampered with.”
“It is a big and growing problem that continues to plague used-car buyers,” said Basso.
2. Car Cloning
Scafidi says one of the newest auto frauds is “car cloning.” Cloning occurs when multiple (usually higher-end) cars of the same model are stolen and registered with a VIN number from a legitimate vehicle.
“The thieves go get a VIN number from a showroom floor and reproduce it three or four times and attach it to the stolen vehicles and then ship them to four or five states,” said Scafidi. “The multiple VIN numbers for us are the biggest red flags out there, and we go get ‘em.”
3. Carjackings
You may think that carjackings had gone the way of spinning rims, but rates are holding steady in Southern California and increasing in Michigan. And there are pockets of America urban areas where the trend never really died down.
Officer Canales of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division says carjacking is still “pretty common.”
“We get a few every now and then, usually a gun or knife is involved. It can be anything from high-value to low-value [cars] but we see more Hondas—Accords and Civics—and Toyotas.”
Carjackings occur most frequently in urban areas and account for about three percent of all thefts, the Insurance Information Institute reports.
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