By Matis Glenn
After painstakingly tracking down a car stolen from a Flatbush resident, Shomrim led police to the scene of what is likely a sophisticated, wide-scale luxury auto theft operation in the Bronx.
The victim, who lives on East 29th Street between Avenues R and S, called Shomrim at around 7 a.m. Sunday morning when he discovered that his black Acura SUV was missing from his driveway. Shomrim members, using surveillance footage, identified the car the thieves had arrived in as a white Acura, which they were able to track for several blocks before losing its path.
Shomrim then used the stolen car’s GPS system to track the vehicle, which led them first into Manhattan, then to the Bronx. After about an hour of searching, the thieves deactivated the system.
But unbeknownst to the bandits, the driver had an Apple tag tracker in the car.
“The only problem was that Apple tags are not in real-time; there’s a two to three minute delay,” A Shomrim coordinator told Hamodia.
“But that’s when we realized the thieves were in a specific area in the Bronx.”
Shomrim continued trailing the stolen vehicle for about five hours as it perambulated around the area, but the keen eye of one of the members spotted the white Acura that was used in committing the theft, parked in a lot.
“There were a few luxury cars in the lot,” the coordinator said. “Our members believed it might be a base for operations, but we didn’t know for sure at the time.”
After another 20 minutes of following the apple tag’s trail, Shomrim members finally spotted the stolen car on West 187th street, and immediately informed police.
A few minutes later, before police arrived, the suspect apparently sensed that he was being followed, and made a reckless U-turn on a busy street full of pedestrians to evade Shomrim, who would not put others in harm’s way to make such a maneuver.
The Shomrim member who spotted the white Acura in the parking lot had a hunch that the suspect would go there; he informed police, and sure enough, NYPD officers nabbed the suspect in the lot with both cars, at around 3:30 p.m.
The white Acura was found to have been stolen, as were the plates that were on it. Another vehicle in the lot was determined to be stolen, too.
Police found two devices on the suspect when they arrested him. One was a signal extender, which lengthens the key fob’s radius, tricking the car into thinking that the key is close enough to the car for it to open and start; and the other was a special computer used by dealerships to reprogram key fobs.
When the black car was returned to the victim, he found that his old key, in fact, did not work anymore; the thieves had reprogrammed the car.
In the lot, police also found numerous stolen license plates.
“Hopefully today’s arrest will lead to exposing a large organized group which has been stealing luxury cars throughout Brooklyn,” the coordinator said. “Police think these people are responsible for many, many other thefts.”
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