A sophisticated car theft ring, apparently based in Los Angeles County, has been operating well across county lines into San Bernardino County, stealing cars generally in the dead of night.
Targeted by the thieves are late model luxury cars and Toyota and Chevrolet trucks.
The operations involve what can be described as a scout who seems to be spotting the vehicles to be taken and reconnoitering to determine that the circumstance for a quick hook-up and getaway can be effectuated, whereafter a tow truck arrives to execute an efficient and speedy expropriation and instantaneous departure.
Some of the thefts have been captured on video, but identification of the car and truck used by the perpetrators, quite possibly because their license plates were obscured or coated with some sort of reflective gloss that prevents them from being visible on camera, has not been made.
The first such theft recognized as having been perpetrated by the ring occurred in Adelanto in early November, when the white tow truck, which has no markings, made off with a Chevrolet Camaro owned by Adrian Medina. Medina posted a video of the theft on social media. That video has since gone viral.
On December 3, what is believed to be the white tow truck skulked into a Chino neighborhood. A CTS-5 owed by Jesse Roller was parked in his home’s driveway. Video shot from a neighbor’s security camera shows the tow truck backing up to the threshold of the driveway at around 6 a.m. Without the driver of the tow truck exiting the vehicle, a lift is mechanically inserted beneath the car’s chassis between its two back wheels, which were then raised five to six inches off the ground. Another mechanism then hooked the axle or the framing beneath the transmission, and the tow truck pulled the car out of the driveway. The entire removal was effectuated in 18 seconds.
Roller filed a police report on December 4. A week later, after the vehicle was spotted by license-plate scanners, the car, stripped of its interior and multiple parts, was found in a Compton tow yard.
On December 31, at 1:36 a.m., the white tow truck swooped into the residential neighborhood on White Ash Road in Devore at the outskirts of San Bernardino, driving past a 2024 Toyota Tacoma owned by Brandon Hurtado. It too the tow truck eight seconds to deftly back into place behind the truck, and another four seconds to effectuate the connection and begin moving out. The movement of the truck resulted in the truck’s warning mechanism to engage, with the headlights flashing and the horn blaring, but the thief just coolly continued on. Other videos from various homes around the neighborhood caught the spectacle of the Tacoma, protesting loudly with the intermittent horn blasts and flashing headlights as it was being driven backwards, but the theft was completed without the perpetrator being caught.
Two similar thefts occurred in Rancho Cucamonga within day of one another. In one case, the vehicle was found stripped in Hesperia.
In some cases, it appears that the thief or thieves to access the inside of the stolen cars had to break a window. In others the windows remained intact. In all known cases, trackers on the vehicles, when they were present, were disenabled.
There are reports, perhaps speculative and perhaps supported by fact, of some of the vehicles going to Victorville. Further speculation, i.e., statements made without any marshaling of specific information. Is that the ring is based somewhere in Los Angeles County and that some of the cars have been worked on in chop shops, been sent overseas or were driven to Mexico.
There were two well documented cases involving the tow truck in Carson. The omnipresence of security cameras in one specific neighborhood there showed a black car first coming into the area as if its driver or passengers are reconnoitering. The black car stops and parks and stays in place for about 90 seconds, proximate to the car or truck that is being towed. This is followed by the white tow truck arriving. Once the truck makes the hook up, the black car leaves.
In some cases, the stolen vehicles were parked on the street. In other cases, they were in the driveways of their owners.
-Mark Gutglueck