New twist in car theft, use a sleeping pill

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CRIMES
New twist in car theft, use a sleeping pill
By Suparat Iamtal
The Nation 2011-06-15

Car theft gangs have devised a new trick - employing women to drug drivers in remote motels while the men make off with their chartered sedans and vans.

The Metropolitan Police's anti-theft centre has reported the carjack rings start by chartering vehicles for short trips. They choose the models and variants that match the orders of their customers. The women will get acquainted with the drivers before the vehicle is chartered for a distant location.

The women will sneakily put sleeping pills in the drivers' food or drinks while in a motel room. When the drivers fall asleep, the men take the vehicles and they and the women flee together.

According to www.rodhai.com, this technique is practical as it is non-lethal and the yield is high, compared to the old seek-and-steal method - roaming the streets to find vehicles wanted by customers.

Other techniques - renting vehicles and reselling them to unwitting clients, or pawning them at gambling dens - do not work anymore following a recent crackdown and car buyers' awareness of the practice.

The rackets also register the stolen cars using the registration details of totalled vehicles or rely on the invalid registration details of other types to hide their identities.

They also attach fake licence plates before selling stolen vehicles to willing or unwitting buyers, who will face arrest or legal action when confronted by the former owners.

The syndicates do not only deal in cars, but also smuggle in parts of luxury cars or motorcycle models with high excise tax rates. The "ghost vehicles" are reassembled, usually with the help of agreeable garages, before they are sold to knowing buyers at large profits from the tax-free prices.

Crude methods and brute force are in vogue, like taking cars or motorcycles from victims on sight or scratching targeted vehicles to make them stop, and robbing them immediately at gun or knife point.

On other occasions, the villains break into homes with luxury cars and drive them away, or come back the next night after snatching the keys or making skeleton keys from moulds of the cars' ignition sockets.