4 Corners & stollen car racket

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Anyone see 4 corners on ABC tonight..
Hmmm ?? I wish they didn't show so much on WSID ..
If your late model car goes missing, don’t expect to see it again soon.

Chances are it’s being rapidly dissected by swarming thieves, the parts packed into containers destined for ports in the far off Middle East. There, the stolen pieces will be unpacked and assembled like a mosaic, then rebirthed as a shining "new" vehicle.

Or maybe it’s only headed interstate, to start a new life as a "clone" of another vehicle, with stolen identity and forged plates.

The inventiveness of Australia’s stolen car industry seems limited only by its imagination. Its practitioners are becoming more brazen and more artful. At one end there are the scammers who inhabit the smash repair game or who swipe old cars and sell them for scrap. At the other are the balaclava-clad thugs who use axes and baseball bats and terror to force drivers from luxury vehicles.

While police can take credit for a recent dip in total car thefts, still about 85,000 cars are stolen every year – one every six minutes - and many are never recovered.

Authorities can only check a small percentage of containers so they can only guess at the number that end up overseas. Their suspicions were first aroused by a spike in exports of apparently legal parts to the Middle East. A huge police operation then uncovered a virtual Aladdin’s Cave of stolen vehicles and parts, bound for the Middle East. Now police believe that Middle Eastern crime groups, centred on south-western Sydney, have captured the biggest share of this lucrative market.

As Four Corners reports, cars are stolen to order: make, colour, model, year; a wreck is bought legally in Brisbane and a vehicle of the same type is stolen in Sydney so that it can be rebirthed and sold in Melbourne; gangs fight at auction rooms over who will buy the wrecks that can be used for rebirthing.

Chris Masters reveals the various tricks of the stolen car trade and traces the spectacular crash of one big syndicate following an investigation that ran for six months and involved 450 police and extensive phone taps.

While insurers and smash repairers blame each other for encouraging crooks, technology may hold the key to beating them. Masters looks at an Australian proven anti-theft invention – the spraying of thousands of uniquely coded microdots on the car’s underbody – and asks why manufacturers have been slow to take it up.

"Car Wars" – on Four Corners, 8.30 pm Monday 26 June, ABC TV.

This program wil be repeated about 11 pm Wednesday 28 June; also on ABC2 digital channel at 7 pm and 9.30 pm Wednesday.

Program Transcript
Read the program transcript of Chris Masters' report "Cars Wars."

Interviews and Resources
Read extended interview transcripts, relevant reports and articles, and access links to key bodies in relation to car theft and vehicle rebirthing in Australia.

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