Kevin Donovan’s car was stolen from his driveway in Toronto. It was tracked to a Halifax port, bound for the Middle East
My blue Toyota Highlander SUV was in our driveway in Toronto at 3:01 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 30.
At 3:02 a.m. someone used a high-tech device to unlock the door and start the engine. The thief backed the Toyota out of the driveway and headed up the street, just over a kilometre, past our local high school, and turned right after some train tracks. Most likely the thief had a buddy in a second vehicle who dropped him at our house, then shadowed him up the road.
My Toyota stopped at the side of a small park at 3:05 a.m., according to the internal tracking device. Then all electronic trace of the five-month-old vehicle vanished. Gone with it a brand-new orbital sander, some tie-down straps, golf clubs, two kilograms of bread flour, and a two-pack of Werther's hard candies.
Roughly 80,000 cars are stolen in Canada each year - 25,000 of those in Ontario, with most of those from the GTA. It's a growing number due to the pandemic, with supply chain issues reducing the number of new cars for sale or lease.
Police and insurance investigators told me this theft was likely carried out by a web of local and international car-theft rings with connections to the Middle East and terrorism. They told me the Toyota, like most cars stolen by these rings, would never be seen again.
They were wrong. This is one stolen vehicle's journey.
I park my car in a well-lit driveway, angle it in such a way that, I thought, would make it hard to steal. Key fobs kept in a drawer in the centre of the house, not hanging near the door.
Toronto police detectives and insurance investigators say that while we were all in the house asleep, the thieves used what is known as the relay attack." That means that they used a hand-held device to send a signal to the key fobs inside the house, acquired the signal, then amplified it to open the vehicle door.
Many cars these days have an electronic fob" instead of a physical key, created for convenience, but part of the problem. My Toyota thought it was getting a signal from me pressing the unlock button on the small black fob. There's a fix to this, called the Faraday bag or pouch (which stops the signal from being acquired), which I now own. More on that later.
Step one accomplished. Probably less than a minute and the thief was inside.
Next, the thief most likely plugged a version of a vehicle diagnostic device into the OBD (on-board diagnostics) port under the dashboard. This port is used legitimately by mechanics servicing a vehicle, checking to see if all is in working order. This version of the diagnostic device can tell a car it needs a new fob, and it reprograms a blank" fob to start the engine. These can be purchased for as little as $1,000 on the black market.
For my Toyota, the thief programmed two new key fobs. Car companies could figure out a way to defeat this part of the attack (a lock on the port under the dashboard, for example) but sources say there is no incentive. With a car stolen, the owner typically buys or leases another one from the same company.
Step two accomplished. The thief backed out of my driveway. Maybe two minutes have elapsed.
Now where does it go? The modern Toyota has an app called Toyota Connect. Other automakers have similar apps. The data from the app told me later that the vehicle left the driveway at 3:02 a.m. I received no notification of this at the time. The data also told me that it was driven north to a small parkette near Dundas Street and Montgomery Avenue in Etobicoke.
At that point, the vehicle stopped communicating with the app. That's because the guidance system, along with the device that talks to the app, was disabled. A small antenna on the roof that sends the signal to the app was also removed. Intriguingly, my licence plates were not. My trailer hitch and ball was. In a cargo container, you need all the space you can get.
Step three accomplished. It's a guesstimate, but likely no more than 15 minutes have elapsed at this point. Insurance investigators and cops like to talk about Jerry Bruckheimer's 2000 movie, Gone in 60 Seconds" - Nicolas Cage and his team of classy bandits took cars that quickly.
I interviewed more than 20 people - from the policing, insurance and other worlds - for this story. Most asked that their names not be used.
The thieves who dropped the Toyota beside the parkette most likely left, police and insurance investigators say. Their job was done and they likely had more cars to steal before the sun rose. The two key fobs were left in the Toyota for a different crew.
This new crew drove the Toyota to a staging area, and right into a 40-foot-long container, just big enough to hold two cars. A second Toyota stolen around the same time was nestled inside, front grille to back bumper. A truck picked up the container and drove it to one of two intermodal" railyards, where trucks deliver cargo to the Canadian rail system. Investigators say it was either the railyard in Brampton or Concord. Regardless, by the next day, Oct. 1, the Toyota was on an eastbound train.
A few years ago, young car thieves - under 18 so if they were caught it would be a minor penalty - would have been hired to drive the Toyota to the Port of Montreal. Investigators say too many were arrested, and thieves have turned to using trains; the Port of Halifax has become more popular.
It was a shock when I noticed the Toyota was gone from its normal spot. There's a moment when you think, did I leave it somewhere else? The app told me it was at a parkette up the street. To be truthful, I was pretty excited. I went there and, of course, no car. I talked to homeowners nearby. We see lots of cars parked there at night," one resident said, adding it looked suspicious.
My first call was to Toronto police. The officers I dealt with were good, professional and understanding, but it was all over the phone, the reality of property crime in the big city. Did we have any video of the theft? No. The detective said he would check video at community centres and schools along the path the app told me the vehicle travelled.
By Oct. 2, my Toyota and 29 other vehicles were at the Port of Halifax, about to be loaded onto a massive cargo ship that was bound for the Port of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Among the cars were more Toyota Highlanders and Toyota RAV4s, Ford F150 pickup trucks, Lexus RX 350s, Honda CR-Vs and a few Porsches. A conservative guess is these 30 vehicles recovered that day were worth in total $1.6 million in Canada.
Where they were going - countries in the Middle East and beyond - they would sell for two to three times that value, particularly now because the worldwide semi-conductor chip shortage caused by the pandemic has reduced the availability of vehicles. There's a big profit margin in this business. It costs only about $10,000 to move a shipping container that can hold two or three vehicles. Sources say they believe hundreds more passed through the port that week, undetected.
Police told me these containers had legitimate-looking shipping labels called a manifest" on them, and they had a special tape applied across the doors as an official seal. The manifest and a B13 Export Declaration" - attesting to what was inside - were fake. In some cases thieves will forge documents stating that the container holds a shipment of something innocuous, dishwashers or other large items. (I do not know what was listed on the manifest for my specific vehicle.)
The captain of the cargo ship needs to know the weight of each container to properly balance the ship for the voyage. (A car like a Highlander weighs about 2,000 kilograms, and a dishwasher weighs about 77 kilograms, meaning 26 dishwashers weigh as much as one Toyota.)
If they do disclose that the container holds cars, they record a fake VIN" - Vehicle Identification Number. All cars carry one; it is printed on the dashboard under the windshield, and you will see it on your ownership and insurance documents. Thieves sometimes re-VIN" a car, placing a new VIN over the old one, so that a customs officer checking will not know the vehicle is on the stolen list.
My Toyota was not re-VIN'ed." In fact, police say that when customs officers doing a spot check opened the can" (slang for container) they found my white Ontario licence plates attached.
A new independent, non-profit Canadian agency called Equite Association investigates insurance crime. Its investigators have teamed up with agents of the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA). Representatives of that team contacted Toronto police last Monday to say that my vehicle had been recovered." According to police, CBSA agents were conducting checks on containers and popped" one and found my Toyota, checked the Canadian Police Information Centre and discovered it was stolen.
A Toronto police officer called me.
Mr. Donovan, I have good news. Your car has been found."
You're kidding," I said. Everyone I had asked - cops, insurance adjuster and broker, the car rental company - said the car was long gone.
In Halifax. At the port. About to go to the Middle East."
A massive container ship waiting in the Halifax port was scheduled to take it to Dubai. (These ships can pack 1,000 40-foot containers.) Up until a year ago, most stolen cars in Canada leaving from the East Coast were sent to West Africa, then shipped up to Europe. Nobody could tell me why, but now the majority of stolen vehicles from the east coast are going directly to the Middle East.
Each year, more than half a million 40-foot-long containers pass through the Halifax port, one of the few on the Eastern Seaboard that can handle the giant container ships. Canada, like all countries, is more interested in what comes into the country, less concerned about what is going out. Bottom line: customs officers can't check them all.
My Toyota was found with the new key fobs inside. There was some minor damage to the front end, likely when the other Toyota banged against it. My tie-down straps and some chainsaw blades I was going to have sharpened were in the back. The brand new orbital sander, the bread flour and the Werther's candies were gone. One investigator joked that they were looking for a handyman with a sweet tooth who was not gluten-intolerant.
An investigative source with knowledge of my case told me that the names on the manifest, plus the names of the people and company that arranged for the shipping, were fake people, fake companies." The trucking company that moved the container to the railyard most likely did not know there was stolen property inside.
The trucker got a call - pick up a container, take it to the railyard. He's just a guy trying to make a living, not one of the bad guys," the law enforcement source told me.
Between the ports of Montreal and Halifax, Canadian customs officials have seized about 700 stolen vehicles from containers this year, the majority stolen from Ontario. To put that in perspective, in the city of Toronto alone there have been 5,700 vehicles - many of them SUVs and pickups - stolen so far this year. In 2020, about 25,000 vehicles were stolen Ontario-wide. That's a number that has steadily increased during the almost two years of the pandemic.
One reason for the rise in car thefts is the scarcity of new vehicles, caused by a disruption in the supply chain due to the pandemic. Modern cars use 1,000 to 2,000 semi-conductor computer chips for everything from the operation of power brakes, power steering, backup cameras and the onboard display screen. With fewer cars available, crews working in steal to order" rings prowl Toronto and other neighbourhoods in an organized fashion.
Toronto police say they concentrate on one neighbourhood at a time. (It was Scarborough in the summer.) Lately, and my neighbours can attest to this, it has been Etobicoke.
Bryan Gast is the vice-president of investigative services at the newly formed Equite Association. He spent 25 years at the OPP, retiring in 2019 as a detective inspector. At Equite his job is to work with customs, police and insurers to combat insurance crime.
There are groups that are professional at doing it," Gast says. They are driving these areas, they are looking for these vehicles. There's probably some that had intelligence from previous nights, OK, there's a nice one sitting in that driveway, it's not on our list tonight but we'll get it tomorrow night."
The Toyota Highlander and RAV-4, the Honda CR-V, the Ford F150 and Dodge Ram pickup trucks, along with several makes of Lexus, top the annual list of most stolen vehicles in Canada, published annually in December by the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
I do not know what my Toyota's new job overseas was going to be, but the reason I have one is that it is a multi-purpose, well-built vehicle. I use mine for driving to interviews, pulling a trailer, moving the family bikes, and not long before it was stolen I picked up a load of pressure-treated beams at Home Depot, strapped them to the roof and went off to fix a retaining wall at my mother-in-law's home. The explosion of sport utility vehicles happened because they are great family cars. Until I retired as a community soccer coach, it was always filled with balls, pylons and corner flags.
Gast said some see car theft as a victimless crime." Your car is stolen, insurance covers the loss, you get a new vehicle. He said it is quite the opposite. To begin with, insurance rates for all drivers are affected, even if your car is not stolen. One study estimates that in Toronto, insurance rates are 13-15 per cent higher to cover payouts for all losses. But it is the involvement of organized crime that is more worrisome.
These vehicles, yours, it's commodity-based money laundering," says Gast. They're exchanging these vehicles and it's supporting terrorism, supporting organized crime. It's a significant problem. Many, many organized groups are behind it."
Interpol, the International Criminal Police Association, draws a direct line between car theft and serious crimes. It has a unit dedicated to combating it.
For organized criminal groups, the acquisition, shipment and trade of stolen vehicles is a low-risk way to make profits," Interpol officials say on its website. Stolen vehicles are frequently trafficked in order to finance and carry out other criminal activities, ranging from drug trafficking, arms dealing, people smuggling and international terrorism." Interpol adds that the resale of stolen vehicles funds terrorism, and in some cases stolen vehicles have been packed with explosives.
Police in Ontario have made some arrests. In October, York Regional Police's auto/cargo theft unit broke up a theft ring, charged nine men in a project dubbed Operation Crockpot." Detectives with the unit seized 88 vehicles valued at $5 million. They also seized $300,000 in cash and a quantity of electronic re-programmers" used to turn a blank key fob into one that would start a specific car. The cars were all destined for overseas locations. In March, York Regional Police seized cars valued at $4.5 million in Project Majestic."
In July 2020, Peel police broke up a car-theft ring. Detectives from their auto squad recovered 36 vehicles valued at $4.2 million and charged 15 men with auto theft crimes.
Toronto police do not have a dedicated auto squad; it was scrapped years ago. A spokesperson said Toronto from time to time puts a targeted policing operation in place" related to auto thefts, and Toronto assisted York and Peel in their busts. The spokesperson said that of the 5,347 vehicles stolen in Toronto this year to date, 1,786 have been recovered, but did not explain how they were recovered or if charges were laid. It's likely many of those recovered were used for quick joy rides - not destined for overseas.
As I have gone through this experience, I was struck by how little my insurance company seemed to care about this issue. The various insurance officials who handled my claim seemed unaware of the statistics, generally shocked that cars are stolen; had no idea how to prevent it; but they did say it would be a good idea to install a security camera. From what I have seen of car-theft security camera footage online, all you see is blurry images of men in hoodies driving your car away.
So, where is my Toyota now?
It is sitting in the CBSA facility in Halifax. Technically, it now belongs to the insurance company. It was a leased vehicle - just four months into my lease - and insurance has settled with the Toyota leasing company.
It will now re-enter the supply chain, as a gently used vehicle (it was the first vehicle in a long line of sedans, minivans and SUVs over 43 years of driving that I actually kept really clean) and sold as a used car.
In the last few weeks, we've heard from neighbours about other cars stolen, spirited away in the night. One friend, who knew about our situation, was reading in her family room after dinner and saw the lights flash on her car - she ran out and found her car running. Whoever had tried to take it must have heard her and raced off into the night.
To the thieves patrolling my neighbourhood, I'm ready for you, packing the Club," Faraday bags, a camera and a few other tricks up my sleeve.
I'm hoping to get an interview.
STOPPING CAR THEFT: BEST PRACTICES
The Star spoke to law enforcement and insurance officials. The consensus was if a thief wants your car he will take it. But there are some ways to make it more difficult.
Purchase a steering wheel club." This heavy-duty unit locks to the steering wheel and prevents it from being turned more than a quarter-turn if installed correctly. The idea is to make it highly visible - the one I bought is bright red - and it is a deterrent. One detective said a thief sees it and thinks, maybe leave this one alone."
There's a similar device that hooks the steering wheel to the brake pedal. A thief carrying a hacksaw could remove either locking device by cutting through the steering wheel, but that takes time a thief may not want to spend in your driveway. Also, the car would need a new steering wheel, which the crime boss might not like," the detective said.
Purchase Faraday bags" or a Faraday box" to keep your keys inside. The English scientist Michael Faraday was a pioneer in the field of electromagnetism in the 1800s. In one experiment, he created a shield to block electromagnetic fields known as a Faraday Cage." The inexpensive pouches police say you should get for your car key fobs bear his name. I have tried them and with the key tucked inside, you cannot open the doors or start the engine.
If you have a garage, park inside it and make sure it is locked. If outside, try to park in a well-lit area.
For families with two vehicles, park the older, less-attractive-to-thieves car behind the new vehicle.
Kevin Donovan can be reached at 416-312-3503 or kdonovan@thestar.ca