Smuggling Stolen Cars (Full Episode) | Trafficked with Mariana Van Zeller

now since the first model T's began rolling off the assembly line Americans have fallen deeply in love with cars there is personalized clothes or tattoos part of the stories we tell about ourselves Hollywood knows how we feel about them whether they are taking us on an adventure or on a vacation or even to the future if you talk to them I can't take another blow like that we give them names you raise them let's go for a little ride we wreck them but mostly we adore them where's your garden which is why I just had to do a story about people who steal them on average every 36 seconds a car is stolen here in the United States it's big money and it's often done by somebody just like this [Music] oh my God that took like less than five seconds okay this is it [Applause] yeah this is insane how many cars you think are here tonight usually we'll get five thousand or more cards seriously 100 I mean like Gathering of so many cars the donuts none of that is legal right no comment no comments who do you think are stolen thousands I've reported on a lot of illegal activities but I've never done a story about stolen cars I was tipped off however that these late night meetups would be a good place to start digging like most of these folks I followed a trail of social media posts to this location in New York City [Music] it was announced last minute so that the police wouldn't be able to shut it down this underground car culture is the real life version of The Fast and the Furious flying in the air the popularity of these events has exploded with the success of the franchise but not all attendees can afford a fancy car so these meetups have become a popular playground for joyriders I do so do you guys know anyone who steals cards uh no nope no I don't personally know anyone now if you did would you tell me no probably not after Decades of decline in the US auto theft spiked in 2020 to the tune of nearly 900 000 cars have you ever stolen a car so yeah um my first car stole is when I was 16. I wind up talking to a guy we're calling Anthony how easy is it to look for it's easy as quick in and outer so a lot of people ask me to go buy these cars and they pay me lots of money I learned that the old toe and go is one of several unsophisticated yet popular ways to steal a car [Music] if you're a car thief sometimes you've got the right tools a dark colored tow truck backs up to a house and steals this car while the owner slept sometimes you need a gun my life lost before my eyes I literally was like this is it and sometimes your targets are just not careful enough this is surveillance video of a car left warming up that was stolen last week about half of stolen cars in the United States end up back in the hands of their rightful owners that leaves over four billion dollars worth of unrecovered cars that wind up everywhere from used car lots to chop shops and you see everybody running to their cars and leaving look it's good [Music] oh wow [Music] how old are you now I'm 20 now how much money do you have you made from the Cars you've stolen so far see like a little under 60 000 stripping them down mainly reports on the solar and east coast and that's not doing it often Anthony tells me that it's harder for the cops to trace the parts of a stolen car but the thieves who make the big money must take a bigger risk selling the whole car intact and there's people making hundreds of thousands on nice cars nice nice cars you sell them there's a whole car because maybe they're not going to trace the VIN and some third world country it turns out there's an underground supply chain of stolen cars exported overseas that's one of the most lucrative smuggling routes in the game so how exactly does a two-ton object packed with anti-theft technology completely disappear where does it end up and who's pulling the strings on such a complicated operation that's exactly what I want to find out okay so this is it about two minutes from the Newark Airport I'm actually thinking stayed at this hotel before I learned that one hub for these International car theft Rings is based just a few miles down the road in Newark New Jersey oh this is it definitely for a long time the city was known as the stolen car capital of the world hi Mariana number one I heard how you want to be called for years number one was part of an operation known for moving millions of dollars worth of luxury Vehicles overseas we ran a few cars by you and you said this is one that you used to regularly you've stole how many of these particular cars do you think you stole okay I can't even count it's maybe thousands wait thousands just of this make and model yeah was this one of your favorites no no it was my favorite money is my favorite eventually his luck ran out over the course of a two-year investigation called operation jacked Authority seized hundreds of cars valued at over 12 million dollars and evicted more than 50 car ring members including number one when I heard that he'd been released from prison I managed to track him down he was reluctant to talk on camera at first because he told me he's out of the game but eventually he agreed to show us a few of his old tricks so I was in the front by the rearview mirror okay and then I gotta go in the back all right I see it all right I love you bro who is that he's one of the best at top uh doing this yeah what were you doing tracking device it's like I won't start keeps them from being able to find the car of course we don't want to advertise too much but there's something over there in the rearview mirror and then there's something in the back and that disables the GPS yeah and every car has not every car all the majority cars have a tracking device it needed different places so when you called him right now all you said was a model on the make of the car and he immediately knew he knows where everything got does he think that you're actually trying to steal a car yeah did he say anything no no he just automatically gave me the information I needed because it could have been critical you have no time to waste yo where you at what you got none of your business I need your help number one insists that cops have only cracked the tip of the iceberg the big players are still very much in the game the car business is a multi-billion dollar a year business do you think that people will want their money to stop I ask if he's able to connect me to any active players but he tells me it's too risky people want to kill me to answer questions unfortunately in my experience luck doesn't open many doors [Music] I need to find someone who trusts me enough to show me how this racket really works hey we're a couple blocks away like a minute away okay I decide to tap an old connection from the drug trafficking underworld he tells me that when his dealers head out for a job they'll rent a stolen car for a couple hours from a crew of car thieves he's managed to set up a meeting with one he calls fittingly klepto how many times you do this you've always been a little nervous worst thing you can do anyways we can take exploded around for the two cars that they're asking for on the list okay what cars are those oh okay now we're looking into a Mercedes and a Nissan we got to be careful because this time yeah people come out sometimes shooting that is yeah you see it there you see them [Music] the trash cans are right there actually taking out the trash can from the front of the car so you can move the car okay he's doing it he's doing it right now look look he's doing it oh my god did you see that okay he's doing it he's doing it right now look look oh my god did you see that oh my God that took like less than five seconds what did he do he did something to the handle and then I made a noise and it opened do you see this he just put the window down and went like this and waved [Music] that was crazy oh my God I don't even I'm like totally discombobulated I don't know what and now they're going super fast and I'm supposed to keep up with them now we're just driving behind a stolen car [Music] and they're parking right here so that was insane gone on 60 seconds in your case it was gone in five seconds exactly that's a lie but I saw you had a little trouble with the handle our keys don't open car locks how did you open the lock then uh can't really tell you that little secret okay and then once you're inside the ignition starts yes it's a program key you can program the key to any damn call since most modern car virgin key fob is the car's VIN number and all car thieves need is a Savvy but corrupt mechanic and so you did your first one I know you're in a bit of a rush you have to go do your second what's the second person Mercedes so it's a Mercedes you know what's somewhere in this neighborhood what is this neighborhood like it's uh a lot of white people man and you're talking about multi-million dollar homes here it's okay you know they cheat a lot of people so everybody teach people rich people cheat people why not let's cheat does it ever cross your mind how are they going to feel when they wake up in the morning and they don't see their cars they ain't gonna suffer and they're not gonna lose anything but a damn car it ain't nothing stupid money for the bank insurance covers your money but insurance claims go up for everybody we all actually at the end of the year they end up paying for cars of course of course it doesn't make me a bad guy every time he was putting the gun on me I was like I was like no please don't don't please him because he was like booming boom like that he was just hitting me with the gun it was horrible [Music] foreign ER that jumps out and takes care of my corner any cop that's coming in whatever I already know the whistle he makes like I'm a person that drives me right here he's in a 10-up truck he Parks away from me and then of course I got my other little buddy over there who Parks a little bit further just you know of course of course he signals him that guy signals him I gotta have at least two black silver girl because no no no no no I'm not trying to go to jail again and you were shot at before Oh plenty of times oh my God what if the people come out this makes me so nervous oh my God I feel so bad for the whoever so I have a car this is insane and I've seen a lot of crazy what starts to come into focus is I'm talking to klepto is the organizational structure of these International operations Crews of Thieves like kleptos are the bottom of the pyramid once they steal a car I'm told they want to get rid of it as soon as possible but how and to whom that's what I'm itching to uncover the next levels of the pyramid you dropped off the cars today at the parking lot what happened to those cars well right now the guys are going to go clean them up and then they're going to go what do you mean by clean them up that's my expertise after years of success running a crew of Thieves klepto's career in stolen cars has actually progressed he's now also working in a position that's known as defense how did you learn how to do that since I was a little kid working at body shops you know family members still need other cars you learn trick the treat the in the operation the job to handle the logistics of laundering a stolen car to disguise the fact that it's stolen and then what happens after that um the low jacks so they won't track them the GPS yes so you have somebody who knows how to do that yes the GPS remove it and then what happens after that we change the numbers the VIN numbers we have another person who knows how to change pin numbers yeah the vehicle identification number or vin is a unique lifetime ID born from the moment a car rolls out of the factory klepto doesn't reveal how they change the vins but once a new VIN number is installed they'll Forge new title and registration documents to match and how much you get paid per car so it depends on the car like so the Mercedes for tonight about 30 000 30 000 yeah at each step in the process klepto pays off the players involved it cost me four four thousand dollars for the key yeah three thousand to each of the thieves two thousand to the VIN forger one thousand to the wheel man who disables the GPS so it's that profitable that you can still make money while paying all these people yes I can meaning for a car like the Mercedes after paying off the crew he'll Bank around twelve thousand dollars it's sold to the wire that's asking for it they send it into the Container you never see it again the car transfers hands to the final player on the U.S side of the network the shipper you can't just put this in your luggage sneak it to another country I meet back up with number one who I know has experience at this level of the operation over the years he says he's made these drops many many times I don't know exact count but over a couple thousand where were the containers going different countries do you know where exactly number one agrees to drive me to the location where he'd rendezvous with the shippers but warns me that this handoff is still the most dangerous in the process well here with this car is parked in front of the gate yeah that's where we used to pull up driving there and put the car in the containers so the containers would be here waiting they said 10 o'clock at night then we'll meet them there at 10 o'clock at night any one of these trucks could be in the process of doing that right now oh my God we have no way of knowing if thieves will be packing these containers with stolen cars tonight but if they are it's definitely not safe to stick around see our car still here dangerous like that because we don't know exactly what they do right and if they see us around with cameras exactly you don't ask questions if somebody standing there with M16 AK-47s they were armed the people running the business weren't you scared well the first time I did it yet I press number one about who are the kingpins these car rings but he either doesn't know or won't say so I do what any good journalist does I follow the money to the port in Newark where there's one final hurdle standing in the Smuggler's way oh that's a nice one oh oh that's a nice one that's a beautiful Jeep right there wow pop the other door wow so is this possibly a stolen car yes possibly good chance absolutely it's a very good chance a very good chance two in there two Mercedes-Benz oh there's it there it is Mercedes brands in front there's a Jeep here brand new 350. WoW brand new they're both brand new cars so here we have a couple of ships the U.S Customs and Border protection's main focus is to intercept Contraband coming into the United States not heading outbound [Music] it's row after row after row here thousands of containers this is the largest port on the East Coast he estimates that they're only able to inspect a small fraction of cars leaving the United States so that's a VIN number this is the bin number right here on the desk which is good news for the car theft Rings I've been investigating it's coming up as a positive positive what we got a positive stolen yeah so it's immediate you can tell right away if you look inside you still see there's a cell phone charger inside so you can see someone still the personal belongings of the person whose vehicle this belong to right out the driveway right out the driveway yeah so there's a car like this now that you found that it's stolen and you know eventually who the owner was doesn't go back to the owner or what happens well the insurance had already made the payout so this usually goes back to the insurance company I kind of feel bad for the owner of the car stolen yeah and the fact that we're all standing on top of his car right now once a vessel departs for international waters the cars that flip through have a much much Slimmer chance for Recovery this was all the same container four cars ending with this the Escalade they have it packed with personal effects there could be guns in here there could be all sorts of different contraband these three cars were in one container if you look you got two of them or Salvage claws they're smashed up and then we had to see a 2021 Land Rover right there it's a flag for me why something it's out of place you're going to put a 2021 layer over and with two wrecks where it might get damaged how many cars are exported from here every year approximately 400 000 cars a year that thirty thousand cars a month oh you go through all of them or how does that work it's impossible to go through all of them what was found last year was 310 stolen cars out of this port I would like to think that's all of them 310 but that's not true it's really like finding a needle in a haystack so who's actually making money with all this well everybody involved is making money who's making the most my guess is it's overseas it hadn't actually occurred to me before that the real money makers of this operation aren't here in the US if there's truly that much money to be made overseas it begs the question who's atop this pyramid and will I be able to find them how soon after a car is stolen does it end up in a container like this if somebody's stealing it let's call it New York put in a container next couple hours it's it's on Terminal ready to be the party it could be that fast it could be the same day next day kind of thing could be that day they steal them from outside have them trucked into Jersey put them in a container here and out they go to a number of different destinations [Music] one of the most popular destinations for stolen cars shipped from the east coast is 5 000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean in West Africa [Music] in a developing Nation owning a car can be synonymous with entry into the middle class [Music] nowhere is that more evidence than Ghana home to one of the fastest growing economies on the planet walk around the capital Accra and you'll feel the energy opportunity is in the air [Music] the going economy it doesn't mean that our people are making some amount of money they would want to have a better life if there's no way people want to have a better life without all in cars so it's a huge industry here in Ghana yes I mean we're developing country everybody wants to drive their car we'll get out of the university the next thing they're thinking about is a car Peter as we'll call him is a local investigative journalist who tells me that Rising incomes have opened the door to New Black markets like stolen cars what would happen if people found out you were helping us up don't mean that somebody puts in an end to your life is it that dangerous it's very dangerous that's the foreignty should be investigated in the first place so you think actually that a lot of the people that buy these cars don't know that they're stolen cars the action is killing any local industry the vast majority of cars in Ghana are imported in fact they're the number one imported item in the country people want to have more exotic lives if you meet an old school mate right they're able to charge you by the car you drive so everybody wants to drive a good car whether they are cheap or you know um stolen stalling and that's why black market industry as cars is booming here so can you tell me more or less how the process works so the cars arrive to find the people they are getting this from these Fun Boys what are they called fraud boards the guys involved in this car business they're called the Frog points and everybody knows about them everybody knows about them and is it all sort of the same Syndicate then that's all it depends on the sort of Click you belong to Peter says he can connect me to a contact who's inside their tight-knit circles but it's unclear what role this person plays [Music] there's a guy who's somehow involved in this car business who's agreed to talk to us so we're driving to what might be his house or his business I'm not sure the sun is actually going down really fast it's going to get dark soon you don't want to get stuck in these unknown roads in the middle of the night well that didn't happen okay I'll go out first little did I know that I had just stepped inside the nerve center the entire operation [Music] I learned that there are criminal groups behind the stolen car game here in Ghana are known as fraud boys [Music] I wanted to meet them face to face and find out who's pulling the strings and if you can put your mask up again sorry [Music] so how do you want to be called Shadow Walker is that your online name yeah in an apartment on the outskirts of Accra I connect with one of these Infamous fraud boys what is it exactly that you do well what I'd write it is is your bank accounts credit card information and what I found was the heart of the entire operation so you go to a backup okay and dark web is not the place that you can go there it's on a Mac browser everything is also Anonymous using an anonymous browser called Tor he accesses the dark web and logs into underground hacker forums where almost any product is listed for sale oh cocaine Colombian cocaine this is a credit card information oh somebody's selling this they are selling if you've ever received an email from your favorite retailer apologizing for a huge data breach a massive Cyber attack affecting nearly 50 million more than 100 million Capital One credit cards it's possible that your identity and credit card information is being sold at an underground hacker Forum just like this is there tons of these for sale of course what for a pittance paid anonymously in cryptocurrency criminals can buy your credit card info and load it onto a fresh card and then what do you do with all that information somebody to give him credit card information we'll take care of it in the U.S yes with a stolen credit card and a fake ID these guys can walk into any car rental location and drive off with a car that will wind up 5 000 miles away on the streets of Accra no broken windows no fake key fobs no carjacking clean and efficient it's right about now that I truly grasp who I'm standing next to he isn't some entry-level page but rather a technological wizard who binds the whole operation together and he has one more trick up his sleeve so this is a car let's say coming from New York to Ghana yes the import fee yes import duties can cost up to 20 percent of the market value of a car so a brand new Range Rover valued at a hundred thousand would be taxed 20 grand so it's my dream outdoor attack so you can hack into the custom service at the harbor yeah everything I'm Blown Away by their methods in addition to their American contacts who steal cars the old-fashioned way these sophisticated Ghanaian operators have found other more ingenious ways to swipe our beloved rides it all points to the Kingpin at the top of the pyramid and I want to meet whoever that is face to face do you know anyone who's involved in other parts of the car business foreign and after some persistence a contact finally leads me to the Breakthrough I've been searching for a meeting with a mastermind we're actually very close to the location seems like it's a really nice neighborhood here right it's a bunch of big houses okay is this someone you should trust like this [Music] hi um thank you for meeting us um what would what is this what car is this this is a Mercedes-Benz C250 it's a nice car and it's from it's stolen uh yeah I just came from the states do you know where in the states I have no idea understood where it's coming from like many of these underworld First Dates the vibus tense suspicious he has to be called Ivan and I can sense that he's sizing me up when did this arrive in Ghana two three months ago two three months ago and do you have people interested already so this happens to be in a garage so oh so this is in a car dealership so it's one of several there but this is what I have available at the moment can I go inside yeah sure be my guest it's so crazy to think that just a couple of months ago this car was in the US belonging to somebody else what other cars came in the same sort of shipment as this one it comes in the consignment of like three four five six the mood starts to relax feel like he's warming up to me he tells me that his group is one of the bigger operations in Accra and that they buy stolen cars in bulk shipments how much did you pay for this one this one yeah do you pay what you can taste like um I know but how much I just want to get a sense but ultimately he plays koi in spite of my efforts to get more information from him he ends up refusing to answer most of my questions [Music] have I opened this so I decide to poke around and see if I can learn anything more about this mystery car oh and this is because the GPS has been cut out I guess maybe there might be a reason why they took it off wow so check this out this is tampered with what's in here [Music] is this the Red Lobster do you have Red Lobster here no oh my God Virginia let me see I will I will so we're close to knowing that at least the person was in Virginia I have no idea he doesn't want to really show that I won't say the city in Virginia there was also a city in Virginia I didn't say that [Music] just a minute maybe it's somebody who wants to buy this car sure definitely should be a buyer so I can make a quick question before I could get what I wanted a confession a tell-all interview about the whole stolen car operation from one of the big players stolen Mercedes-Benz that got here just a few months ago from the US I'm dying to know more about this car's history who owned it do they miss it and do they have any idea where their car is now back in America I get some answers about this mystery car from detective Paula Brunetto with the Connecticut State Police she's been investigating car theft rings for decades yeah I looked at the event and um so it's from a 2014 Mercedes-Benz that was involved in a serious crash which caused it to be a total loss no one's going to drive this car you're telling me that you saw this car in Africa being driven and it was not smashed up right no it was a beautiful Mercedes-Benz so the car you saw was probably stolen with a VIN but the VIN number from this one that was totaled in a horrific crash in Florida stolen car's VIN number would be flagged by authorities but a totaled carsvin wouldn't so there's no way that the VIN on that car that I saw was the real VIN number for their car I very very much doubt that the car you saw in Africa was the same exact car the VIN number on that car was Riven and is being driven around in another country with some clever coordination the fraud boys can swap out the VIN of a stolen car with the same make and model that they pick up at a salvage auction so once it comes up clean from the pot there's nothing to worry about there's nothing to worry about it raises a question about who's really calling the shots in these operations and who's making most of the money I needed to get some answers so I asked Ivan if he'd be willing to meet me again in our first meeting he didn't divulge much information and it's rare to get a follow-up meeting with a top dog but I'm hoping it will happen I know there's a lot more he's not telling me you should be told to wait in this uh parking lot by this church is where he's supposed to meet us I wasn't sure if he'd show up but now it's go time [Music] I managed to convince one of the top fraud boys in the stolen car game in Ghana to meet me for a rare second interview I'm hoping this will be my chance for a tell-all to see the stolen car world through his eyes and here's another club and here you go more fancy cars we've got more Mercedes he takes me to an area known for nightlife in a crop a place where he and fellow fraud boys come to woo potential clients Mercedes Mercedes are big here Maserati do you think that's stolen it's possible most of these guys are Australia really yeah most of the boys come here to hang out what's up guys that are into the business now the cooling car business didn't have some family Generations have made money how much money do you think we're talking about millions of dollars because the business has become the competition who own the richest cars and that proves your connections that proves you have a strong contact up until this point I had assumed that the American criminals were the masterminds of these operations and that West Africa proved to be a useful place to offload their merchandise is to make available most expensive cars that you can think of so who's making most of the money you have to sell it make the money but he's finally spilling the beans and as it turns out it's actually the opposite so you make most of Life yeah yeah I make most of the money the fraud boys are not just the buyers they're the masterminds of the operation and have found willing American criminals to do their dirty work the chain is sort of separated so that you don't know what happens right and that protects the whole Enterprise yeah that's how it is it's guys like Ivan in West Africa who are actually at the top of the pyramid in these International car theft rings everybody wants cheap stuff in Africa so even rich people buy yes rich people buy cheap stuff so if you have a luxury car that's selling for like sixty thousand dollars that the market is about 120 000 that's a better deal but that wouldn't that raise Flex a car that's a third it's written there for last year but at least it would raise some sort of Suspicion right the for the buyer wouldn't they think for a second or maybe this how would they know it everybody knows so it goes really deep this business yeah it's not just about stolen cars we have the mix of these businesses the fraud bodies like the name suggests are always on the lookout for the Trinity the next scam you know the dark world is where everything happens right I'm doing a business I want to make profit out of whatever it is their tentacles stretch into all sorts of criminal activities money laundering romance scams gold fraud they're part of a growing Syndicate that's way bigger than I'd imagined you feel sorry for the people that woke up one morning and they don't have their cars outside their houses so I'm looking at home can solve the car and make money I'm not looking at how the other guy feels okay but isn't there a little part of you that thinks the poor guy who doesn't have a car maybe he like saved all his money to buy this car somebody crying about his car then I'll feel these but since I'm not hearing that to cry it's far away so I don't feel guilty in any way with so much distance between the steel and the a cell it's not hard to imagine feeling disconnected he might not feel guilty but others do you ever feel bad for the people uh yes sometimes I ask myself so what do this money is for someone's son celebration yeah but somebody would do the same thing to me they're not gonna feel bad for me you go you end up in prison you ask yourself was it worth it and it wasn't do you feel bad at all no I need the money just probably better more than worse than they do no matter how you feel about the justifications for stealing these cars the truth is as long as the orders keep coming from this side of the Atlantic the entire underground pipeline is bound to keep thriving there's no real deterrent to stop doing this right yeah it's illegal from the states not from Martin how many cars you estimate are being stolen every day in the city oh hundreds hundreds I mean we don't just leave them here they're all across the country oh yeah if you just get a Bentley for the price of a Honda Accord really good it's a billion dollars a year business all your money is profit y'all give me a good reason why you think it'll stop [Music]

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 2,096,871

Keywords: national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, culture, documentary, perpetual planet nat geo, photography, full episodes, Cocaine, Trafficked with Mariana Van Zeller, Mariana Van Zeller, Trafficked, Mariana, Smuggling videos, Peruvian valley, Miami, Mariana van Zeller, Investigation, Violent gangs, Smuggling Stolen Cars, Stolen Cars, Skyrocketing, US to West Africa, Smuggling 4k, Trafficking 4k, Trafficking videos

Id: jVz6g39ffts

Length: 44min 24sec (2664 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 06 2023