Vertical Markets

The chop shops of Europe

by Mark Rowe

As the global demand for cheaper motor car spare parts continues to grow organised crime gangs specialising in vehicle theft appear to be establishing chop shops quicker than the police can discover them and close them, writes Dr Ken German, now retired from the Met Police, the former head of technology at the Stolen Car Squad at New Scotland Yard.

Chop Shop is an Americanism – a garage or area used by thieves to strip vehicles quickly into their valuable component parts usually for re-sale. Recent successful high profile cross border police operations into several prolific gangs has highlighted the importance of how serious the police now take organised vehicle crime in this country.

One such operation that took over a year for the police to investigate and get to trial saw an international gang of seven Lithuanian nationals who targeted the Midlands area stealing 60 luxury ‘keyless’ cars valued at over £2.4m received more than 30 years imprisonment between them. Each member of the gang, none of whom could speak much English, had a specific role to play in the theft and disposal of stolen cars. They operated a Chop Shop in Lincolnshire, where each car was stripped into saleable component parts that were sealed into black industrial bags ready to be sold via the internet or packed for the journey to a UK ferry port and onto Lithuania where it is believed the scope of their criminal enterprises stretched even further.

One such vehicle had been previously targeted by the gang who used a drone to identify the surrounding area before stealing it. Six hours later it was discovered stripped to the chassis and its parts stored ready for disposal. At the same time the culmination of another lengthy police operation in the North West of England had also reached trial. This organised gang also contained seven members but were British and operated mainly throughout Lancashire, Cheshire and Merseyside stealing £2.6m of high performance cars. These were quickly stripped at their Liverpool Chop Shop and the parts sold on.

The gang used today’s thieves-favoured keyless theft methods to open the doors of cars parked on drives across several counties; but they also burgled 162 victims’ houses to steal the actual key fobs. All seven were sentenced to 23 years imprisonment between them.

Much of the specialist evidence required at these Chop Shops is from police vehicle examiners who are often confronted with huge piles of vehicle component parts that need to be forensically pieced together like a jigsaw enough to prove not only they are stolen but to describe the process for a court to understand. These new dedicated teams of specialist detectives however have seen more than 500 years imprisonment handed out to suspects in the last three years.

Several proactive forces however suggest that the more they look for these ‘Slaughters’ as they are also called the more they find. Operations are often complex and time-consuming; the consequence is that as soon as they close one team of thieves, several more in the same area have taken their place. Meanwhile the growing ‘conveyor belt’ procession of old Volkswagen, and Mercedes vans displaying Polish, Bulgarian, Lithuanian or Romanian registration plates continues along the M20/A20 towards Dover some carrying vehicles on trailers and others with enclosed vans carrying hidden cargos of who knows what.

Indeed so busy has the port become with suspicious vehicles that they often need searching, a requirement that has made the police here and at other exit ports experts in detecting cloned vehicles and associated forged paperwork.

Whilst the volume of this traffic is huge, the successes of this understaffed ‘thin blue line’ are on the increase notably forcing several of these frequent travellers to abandon their normal 24/7 conveyor belt routes and explore any of the 40 exits the UK has to offer.

It’s fair to say that many of these genuine foreign traders are helping rid the UK of a multitude of vehicles we would otherwise have abandoned. Whilst we think that 100,000 is a reasonably high mileage for a car, many of these who are genuine foreign traders think that after 300,000 miles a simple service would be all that was necessary in their country to keep them going for several more years.

The established trade in stolen vehicle parts in Western Europe is extensive and chop shops now extend to trading warehouses that surprisingly have existed under the radar for some time. Several operate with an air of respectability they don’t deserve and continue to amass vast amounts of money from car theft whilst undermining the sale and in some cases the availability of that offered by the legitimate manufacturers who produce these desirable stolen cars.

Much of what these criminal operations now sell is stolen parts for late high value cars, a list that often matches a particular EU country’s ‘top ten’ stolen list. According to Interpol these are part of the annual 800,000 stolen vehicles in Europe sent to the Middle East and Africa. The fight for prized territorial control by these new gangs from Eastern Europe however is becoming less defined albeit those from Lithuania, Bulgaria and Romania continue to be the most prolific in the trafficking of stolen parts throughout Europe.

The chop shops in eastern Europe are less sophisticated however, and the most active gangs often bribe or attempt to bribe the poorly paid police to turn a blind eye on their activities. The fight for stolen vehicles and other equipment like plant that have made it to their eastern country from the west is another hurdle that these warring gangs have to deal with. Their association with other areas of criminal activity has seen these one-time organised car thieves using violence as they amalgamate with people smugglers, money laundering and drug movements alongside their own activities.

Other stolen property found in the possession of these gangs has revealed huge quantities of clearly stolen tools and mechanical equipment taken from commercial vans around Western Europe similar to the UK’s plague of tool thieves which has yet seen no respite. Interestingly quite a few batteries and charging cables for electric vehicles and plug in hybrids believed stolen from the UK have made it to searched premises in Lithuania and the Czech Republic. These were destined not for scrap value but for resale online.

Indeed the price of certain metals involved in the manufacture of these items has risen sharply particularly in the UK giving concern to insurers who worry that thefts will escalate similar to the 450 per cent rise in catalytic converter thefts from hybrid cars over the past two years. Commodity experts suggest that copper markets would decline this year and on into 2022 boosting the value of such equipment.

They have already dealt with many cases of the theft or damage from several of the 500,000 public charging points around the UK and have found that ‘automatic charging port locks’ are vulnerable to thieves. Opportunist thefts from vehicles reported to police include thefts of such equipment which is openly offered on the black market for around £250 for one charger.

Belgium has its own share of Chop Shops and last year they reported over 300,000 car thefts whilst neighbouring Germany only reported 60,000. This anomaly is because in Germany ownership documents are separate from vehicle licence documents. Thieves had exploited this opportunity and were presenting hire cars at the border along with their German car licence documents and forged proof of purchase papers. No property deed was shown which would indicate the car had not been fully paid for. As the first few months’ lease of the car would have been paid the car would not be registered as stolen for some time, making it easy for the thieves to sell it on.

An organised crime network originating from Lithuania and specialising in the theft of car parts was dismantled recently by the German Police. The 13 member gang had stolen navigation systems and multifunction steering wheels valued at 400 000 euros, items which had been shipped to their Chop Shop in Lithuania for resale purposes. Some 279 criminal cases worth 1.35m euros were eventually attributed to this one Lithuanian criminal group alone.

Today in France where over 240,000 cars are stolen each year many of them will end up in the growing number of Chop Shops appearing particularly in the north of the country. Foreign vehicles in particular, stolen from visitors to the country seem to be on the increase and appear popular with the thieves for cloning and easier crossings at border controls with forged papers.

Unusually in Italy where 418,000 recorded car thefts are as high as it has ever been, the increase in Chop Shops by the authorities is not acknowledged. Whilst clearly it has its own vehicle crime problems it is seen as a transit for vehicles from the north traveling down to for example Reggio de Calabria and on to Africa or north through Austria to Hungary the Czech Republic or Romania and Slovenia.

Interpol has recently checked 44,000 suspect vehicles in enquiries from 16 European countries regarding Chop Shops and detected 352 that were stolen and another 1,077 stolen vehicle parts.

In fairness there are many legitimate salvage yards in the UK, usually found in industrial units, or garage mechanics premises.

Chop Shops however can usually be identified by suspicious activity around industrial units, often at unusual times of the day or night, noise coming from buildings out of hours, vehicles that look out of place going into workshops or locations and not coming back out, large amounts of car parts being stored, sometimes in odd places such as gardens, shipping containers in unusual locations, items stored outside that are clearly expensive, such as engines and gearboxes and items for sale via on-line auction sites from the same seller, often in large quantities of the same item or similar.

Less than two years ago in the UK, a four member gang of thieves who stole 117 high value cars worth over £1m from the Midlands, Liverpool, Milton Keynes and Yorkshire areas were given 16 years’ imprisonment between them. Their Chop Shop was in Birmingham where they used their stolen vehicle parts to repair wrecks purchased at auction. These were then sold on many in a dangerous condition to an unsuspecting public. Several of these gang members are due for release shortly.

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