Vehicle owners behind in their payments and faced with mounting debts have begun taking matches to their cars and trucks in an effort to stop their payments and collect the insurance settlements. Unfortunately, in most cases the attempts backfire (pun intended). According to police, when delinquencies on auto loans rise, owner-involved arson jumps as well. Between 2004 and 2007, "potential owner give-ups" (most of which involve torched vehicles) nearly doubled nationally. Distinguishing between an actual theft-and-burn and an owner-induced arson is the job of investigators who often find such cases easy to crack. For example, recently a pair of Chrysler Pacificas were burned and it just so happens that that particular model was only reported stolen 98 times across the nation this year – the so-called "theft" raised more than a few eyebrows at headquarters. In another case, a Yukon owner claimed his truck was stolen and burned overnight. Police knew that the thief likely had the keys (Yukons are especially difficult to hot-wire) so their focus was immediately turned towards the owner who had conveniently left "two cans of gasoline" in the back. In yet another case, the late-paying owners had significantly lowered their deductible just days before the reported theft. Over their heads in debt, fraudulent owners choose arson because the burned-out vehicle shells are often found immediately by authorities, and the insurance companies settle and disburse payments quickly. That is, assuming they haven't fallen behind on their insurance bills as well!
Finding a stash of vehicles left to rot can be exciting, like if they're in a barn and they're vintage and would have some high collectible value once fixed up. Finding a stash of cars left to rot at the bottom of a lake, well, that's a downer for everyone. Authorities in Camas, Washington (the state) recently pulled five gutted cars from Lacamas Lake, all of which had been stolen: two Hondas, two Acuras, and a Chevy Tahoe. The lake's water level is low this time of year, which allowed boaters to see the cars underwater. It's the second time the police have had to do salvage duty in the same lake for the same reason, and by their own accounts it is a "stolen car graveyard." If you live in Oregon's greater Vancouver area where the cars were stolen, it could be time to invest in... a snorkel.
We're tying to figure out which is the greater nightmare scenario. On one side, you have a collector who had his ultra-rare and extremely valuable classic Ferrari stolen. On the other, you have another collector who had the same Ferrari seized by state troopers. One car, two collectors, and one very unfortunate set of circumstances. The car in question is a 1958 Ferrari 250 GT Pininfarina Series 1 Cabriolet, one of only 40 made. It was owned by a collector in Switzerland until it was stolen from a warehouse in Spain in 1993. The owner refused to collect compensation from the car's insurers, certain as he was that such a rare vehicle would turn up sooner or later. Fast forward fifteen years to the residence of Paul Hallingby in Sharon, Connecticut, where the Motor Vehicle Fraud Task Force of the Connecticut State Police showed up to take possession of the car. Hallingby, who paid over half a million for the car, now worth millions, is reportedly cooperating with the authorities. However, few details are known about the car's whereabouts in the intervening years except that it is believed to have been smuggled into the country through New Jersey where it was given a false Vehicle Identification Number. Hallingby is surely devastated, but the collector in Switzerland must be elated to be reunited with his baby after fifteen years.
California's Central Valley takes two of the top ten spots, again, in the National Insurance Crime Bureau's listing of the highest per capita vehicle thefts in the U.S. in 2007. Modesto, CA bumped Las Vegas out of the number one spot, dropping Sin City to number two in the national rankings. San Diego slotted in third, followed by Stockton, CA (about 35 miles from Modesto) and for whatever reason, the NICB grouped San Francisco, Oakland and Fremont, CA into one all-encompassing area for the number five position, despite the three cities being spread 60 miles apart. In the NICB's press release after the jump, it provides a few common sense solutions for thwarting a theft, including removing your keys from the ignition and locking your doors. Additionally, they recommend plenty of high-dollar prevention devices ranging from micro-dot marking and starter-locking devices.
In yet another indication that thieves may boast more skill and luck than overall intelligence, a 22-year-old Somers, Connecticut, resident in possession of a stolen Cadillac STS complained to authorities that someone had broken the window on "his" car. Of course, it took the police just a few minutes to determine that there were some serious holes in the thief's story, and maybe more than a small bit of air inside the young man's head.
Although the self-proclaimed "victim" was in possession of the Caddy's keys, there was no supporting documentation proving ownership, or that he was in the process of purchasing the vehicle from an Avis rental agency, as he claimed. In fact, just how the shady character expected to make those payments on a $50,000 car was in question -- his "employment" was all arranged through a local temp agency. Long story short, the rental agency just so happened to be missing one Cadillac STS, and it didn't take them long to press charges.
Instead of sitting behind the wheel of America's finest luxury marque, the vandal finds himself sitting in jail today, unable to post bail of just $3,500... it may be time to call the agency for another temp position.
This one may seem like a no-brainer, but it's probably not a good idea to hide the spare keys for your first and second car inside your... uh, car. Perhaps you can already tell where we're going with this... for the sake of the story, though, we'll continue. What might happen if your car were stolen? You'd be giving a thief keys to the car they just stole, plus, as a bonus, the keys to your other car.
Unfortunately for at least one man, the scenario in the preceding paragraph is a true story. "We believe the keys for both vehicles may have been inside the initial vehicle that was stolen," said Cornwall police spokesman Blake Paquin, who added, "We never recommend hiding keys in a vehicle." The spare keys for the man's 2002 BMW 325 were hidden in his 2003 Hummer H2, which led to the theft of both vehicles... within the same hour.
Whatever you do,kids, do not steal a donut truck and try to drive that bad boy through Tama County, Iowa. They will make it positively rain police on you. Frank Alvarado found this out the hard way when he stole a donut van from a Donut Delite driver on his rounds, and ended up on a five-and-a-half-hour run from the law.
Alvarado stole the van from Rock Island Hospital in Illinois, and then took off into Iowa, getting to Tama County before he was spotted. Before he could say "Sprinkles!", the donut thief was being pursued by five Tama County sheriff's deputies, plus four more officers from three other police agencies. And get this: one of those other officers came in his personal vehicle. As we said, you don' t mess with the donuts in Tama County. Their reward for catching this criminal: all the donuts in the van.
Actually, we really want to get Mr. Alvarado's side of the story in this, because who steals a donut (!) truck and then hauls tail hundreds of miles west? Sounds like a Cannonball Run... or something... But we feel like Franky "The Donuts" Alvarado is the key to a story even better than this one.
Some people are just pathological. At first, it was amusing that Fresh C280, a member of the MDStreetScene forums, would claim to own a Mercedes CLS55 AMG. How a 19-year-old affords a car that normally retails for around $100,000 is the first thing that made everyone on the forum suspicious. A story about a digital camera becoming a sewage buoy was also an immediate head scratcher, since the pic he posted supposedly came from said camera. Further cementing the obvious dementia was the claim that the picture was taken during a dyno run in New York. It could be New York, except right now it's chilly early spring in the Empire State, and the dyno run picture clearly shows garage bays with the doors flung open and leaves on trees. It gets better as it becomes clear how many balls this kid's trying to juggle to hold up his story. There's a nice little synopsis that debunks the girlfriend angle – even though it's supposedly her car.
It didn't take long for total pwnage to occur when Fresh C280s fellow Maryland car enthusiasts did a little detective work. The car is actually owned by a CarDomain member named Xavier, who hails from Florida and showed up with proof of ownership around 30 pages in. All of the pictures posted to the MDStreetScene bulletin board were stolen from the actual owner's CarDomain page. This is weirder than the guy who thought up direct exhaust injection. The makings of a character study are all there – apparent delusional schizophrenia, a longing to be somebody, a sad little existence, and completely self-inflicted massive public humiliation. There's even a cameo by a famous lolcat. It doesn't get better than this, folks, the thread is only a day old so far. Check it out for yourself, it gets good around page 6. Oh, and Fresh C280's quote at the bottom of his posts is oddly prescient.
Bulging in the exhaust system like a rabbit deep in the belly of a boa, the catalytic converter cleans engine fumes before they are released into the air. To the inexperienced, the oversized metal cylinder looks rather uninteresting. To a thief, it is a pod of precious metal worth nearly $200 on the black market.
Catalytic converters are loaded with small amounts of precious metals including platinum, palladium and rhodium. When combined with hot exhaust gasses, the metals chemically react to detoxify the pollutants (this all happens without any trip to a Malibu clinic). All the average Joe really needs to know is that every car and truck is supposed to have one.
This low-lying fruit for the criminals hangs within easy reach under many sport-utility vehicles. Sitting taller than your average passenger car, their cats are easy to steal, and often don't even require the vehicle to be lifted for access. According to police, the Toyota 4Runner and Kia Sportage are the running favorites.
Unless it is your normal dwelling, there is no need to sleep underneath your vehicle with a shotgun; innovative consumers have found that spot-welding the catalytic converter to the rest of the exhaust system has proven to be an effective deterrent.
The Catch-22 with advertising these days is that someone will undoubtedly be offended if your campaign is clever enough to be memorable. Ford of Canada came up with such an effort for the Escape, showing the CUV wearing a bumper sticker with the phrase "drive it like you stole it," and the tagline "Built for life in Manitoba." Innocuous enough, you say? Apparently not.
We can't say for sure if it's just people looking for things to get offended over, or if Canadians are just hypersensitive to Manitoba's reputation as a car theft hotspot. Either way, Ford has responded to the politically correct whining and pulled the ad while offering copious apologies. While car theft and traffic accidents are no laughing matter, especially when innocent people are tragically injured, you can't blame a car advertising campaign that uses an exceedingly common phrase for inducing an already rampant problem. We fail to see how people commiting criminal acts have anything to do with the automaker's sales efforts. Certainly, the message sent by the advertisement is that the Escape is tough enough for Canada, not that it's the car of choice for boosting. It'd be nice to see a company under unreasonable fire just offer up something like "whatevs, get a thicker skin." It's advertising, after all, not the cure for cancer. Of course, it would also have been easy enough to say "Drive it like you hate it" and send largely the same message.
