Tech helps recover £100,000 stolen car

A luxury sports car, worth £100,000, has been recovered thanks to covert telematics technology.

The Porsche 911 was taken from a repair centre in Birmingham, along with three other cars.

The Porsche had its conventional telematics device removed and was fitted with cloned license plates, making it almost untraceable.

But a covert device fitted by anti-fraud and theft experts Asset Protection Unit (APU) managed to recover the prestige vehicle.

The four cars were taken on 27 September at around 9:47pm.

Ten minutes later, the 911’s telematics device and local CCTV showed cars entering a dump site in the Birmingham area. There, the conventional telematics device was expertly removed, and the licence plates changed.

Using the covert device still in place, APU’s team of data experts and former police officers located the car stashed in a hotel car park in Coventry just two days later.

The theft took place as the Metropolitan Police announced new guidelines for ‘low-level’ crime in response to funding cuts. While it is not yet a UK-wide policy, the changes mean the Met Police often won’t investigate many crimes including vehicle theft.

Meanwhile, 40 police forces in England and Wales recently revealed that car theft was up 30% from 2013.

“This latest incident is worrying evidence of thieves becoming increasingly savvy,” says director of investigation at APU, Neil Thomas. “When organised gangs of thieves go to these lengths it can make tracking and recovering the vehicles almost impossible.”

APU’s team of telematics and anti-fraud experts is increasingly utilised by police forces and insurance companies across the country, as police often lack the resources and skills to interrogate telematics data and package it into usable evidence in court.